The Boys Next Door
by bibsa1
Summary: AU. SasuSaku. All's fair in love, war, and wakeboarding.
1. And So It Begins

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, or the book The Boys Next Door by Jennifer Echols. **

_Chapter 1 - Re-uploaded 11/21/2012_

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_The boys are falling in love  
With girls who don't know what's up  
I think we've all had enough of this now  
These kids are talking 'bout love  
I think we've all had enough  
We've had enough of this now_

Girls Do What They Want by The Maine

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Itachi smirked down at me, the sun casting a golden halo around his face. His smooth black hair hung around his face, and my fingers itched to reach out and touch it - to feel its softness. He shouted to me over the noise of the boat motor and the wind, "Sakura, when we're old enough, I want you to be my girlfriend." He didn't even seem to care that the other boys could hear him.

"Sure!" I exclaimed. It's not every day the man of your dreams tells you he wants you to be his girlfriend. "But, when will we be old enough?"

His dark black eyes gazed down at me tenderly as he replied. At least, I _think_ he replied. I did see his lips move.

"Pardon?" I sure knew how to draw out a romantic moment. His lips moved again, but I still couldn't hear him, even though the noise around us wasn't getting any louder. Obviously he was just mouthing the words, pretending to whisper sweet nothings to me. Boys did stuff like that all the time. He'd been teasing me the whole time—

"_Bastard_!" I jolted up in my sweat-soaked bed, swatting away the hair that was stuck to my wet face. Then I realized just what I'd yelled out. "Oops. Sorry, Mom." I said to her picture on my bedside table, although she probably hadn't heard me over my alarm clock blaring Katy Perry, "Waking Up In Vegas."

Hopefully she'd understand. I'd just had an interaction with Itachi! Even if it was only in my dreams.

Usually I didn't remember my dreams. Whenever my brother, Naruto, was home from university, he would always tell Dad and I about his dreams over breakfast. Rihanna kicking his butt at a nightclub for trying to take her picture. Megan Fox dressed as airport security, giving him a pat down. All pure (or not-so pure), male hormone-driven fantasies. It made me jealous. No, I didn't want to dream about Rihanna or Megan Fox, but if I was spending the night with Ed Westwick and didn't even _know_ it, I was missing out on a crucial third of my life.

I'd once searched up dreaming online, and I found out that some people don't remember their dreams if they're used to getting up at the same time every day, and the body has enough time to complete the dream cycle.

So why did I remember my dream today? It was the beginning of summer vacation, that's why. And in order to start work at the marina, I'd had to set my alarm clock for thirty minutes earlier than usual. And there it was: my dream.

About Itachi: check!

Totally blowing me off, as per usual: nooooooo!

That may be happening in my dreams, but I wasn't going to let it happen in real life. Not anymore. I had a plan to make Itachi mine, starting from today. I gave Mom's picture an okay sign—the wakeboarding sign for _ready to go_—and rolled out of bed.

My dad and brother suspected nothing, fu fu. They didn't even notice what I was wearing, but that's alright. It wasn't meant for them anyway. The conversation at breakfast was the same one we'd had every summer since my brother was eight and I was five.

Dad to brother: "You watch out for your sister today."

Brother, through a mouthful of whatever was on the menu that morning: "Mhm."

Dad to me: "And you watch out for those boys next door."

Me: (Eyeroll.)

Brother: "I had this awesome dream about Jessica Biel last night."

After breakfast, my brother and I made our way across our yard, and the Uchiha's yard, to the complex of showrooms, warehouses and docks that made up Uchiha's Marina. The air was already thick with humidity and heat, and the sweet smell of freshly cut grass that would last the entire summer. I didn't mind. I liked the heat. And I quivered in my flip flops at the prospect of another whole summer with Itachi. I'd been going through withdrawal.

In the past, any one of the Uchiha boys, including Itachi, might have shown up at my house whenever to throw the football around, or play video games with my brother. Sometimes they'd let me play too, if they felt sorry for me. Or if their mom had guilted them into it. And my brother might, at any time, go over to their house. But _I_ couldn't go to their house. If I had, they would have stopped what they were doing, looked up at me, and wondered what the hell I was doing there. They were my brother's friends, not mine.

Well, Sasuke was my friend. In fact, he was just as much my friend as he was my brother's. Maybe even more so. Even though we were the same age, Sasuke and I didn't have any classes together at school, so you'd think that he'd get off his butt and walk the hundred or so yards between our houses to come and see me. But he didn't. And if I'd gone to visit him, it would have been obvious that he wasn't the Uchiha I was _really_ looking for.

After my brother left for university, my last tie to Itachi was severed. He was two years older than me, so I didn't have any classes with _him_, either. In fact, I wasn't even in the same part of the school with him. Of course, there was the odd time I would see him. I'd seen him once at a football game and another time outside of the movie theatre when I'd been riding around with Ino after a tennis match. But I never dared approach him. He was always flirting with glamorous girls like Anko Mitarashi or Hana Inuzuka. I was too young for him and he'd never even thought of hooking up with me. On the rare occasion that he happened to be taking the garbage out at the same time that I was check the mail, he'd give me his usual smile and a big hug and act like I was his best friend ever... for thirty heavenly seconds.

It had been a long winter. _Finally_, the summer was here, and I could spend every day working side by side with Itachi. The Uchiha's were always in need of extra help at the marina during the busy season, and just like last year, I had a job there—and an excuse to spend more time with Itachi. I sped up my trek across the lawn and found myself in a footrace with my brother, which was totally unfair because I had on a backpack and he was wearing sneakers, but I beat him to the warehouse by half a length anyway.

The guys had already come in and claimed all the good jobs, so I wouldn't have a chance to work side by side with Itachi. The oldest Uchiha, Shisui, was helping the full-time workers take the boats out of storage and get them ready for delivery and he wanted my brother to work with him, so they could catch up with their lives at two different schools. Itachi and Sasuke were already gone, delivering boats to customers up and down the lake. Rats, Itachi wasn't around to see my outfit. I was so desperate to start this "new Sakura" thing that I would have settled for a double take from Shisui or Sasuke.

All I got was Mrs. Uchiha. But I guess she was as good a person as any to run an outfit by. She seemed stylish enough, for a mother. Her black hair was cut to hang long and sleek around her shoulders. She seemed like the kind of mother you would want, so as not to embarrass you. I found her in the office, typing away on the computer. I sat on a stool behind her, and watching her type, I asked, "Notice anything different?"

She paused and squinted at the computer screen, "I'm using a different font?"

"Notice anything different about my _boobs_?"

_That_ got her attention. She spun around and peered quizzically at my chest. "You changed your boobs?"

"I'm _showing_ my boobs." I said proudly, gesturing at them like that woman does on the _Wheel of Fortune_, to show the contestants what they could win. Or in this case, what their _son_ could win.

My usual summer uniform consisted of Sasuke's outgrown clothes: an old pair of his jeans that I'd cut off into shorts and wore with a wide belt to hold up at the waist, and one of his old football t-shirts. Underneath that, I used to wear a one-piece sports bathing suit with full coverage. As in, all-the-way-up-to-my-neck full coverage. Early on in the "boob emerging" stage, I really had no boobs to speak of, and it was a sore subject for me. Remember typing 55378008 into your calculator and passing it to the flat-chested girl across the aisle? That was _me_, asshole. I would have died twice over if any of the boys had ever mentioned my booblets.

Last year though, my boobs had progressed quite nicely, in my opinion. So I'd upgraded from a one-piece to a tankini. But, I wasn't ready for more exposure just yet. I didn't want the boys to treat me like a girl.

Well, now things have changed. So today, I wore a cute little bikini, with Sasuke's old cut-offs over top, like always. But, amazingly, they looked sexy, hung low on my hips, and I'd traded in the old football t-shirt for a little red tank top that ended just above my belly button and hugged my figure. I even had a little bit of cleavage! I was so proud of myself. Itachi wasn't going to know what hit him.

Mrs. Uchiha stared perplexed at my chest. "Oh, I get it. You're trying to look hot."

"_Thank_ you!" Mission accomplished.

"Here's a piece of advice: close your legs."

I snapped my thighs together and slid off the stool. I was always being scolded for sitting like a boy. "Where do you want me?" I asked as I stomped my way to the door.

Mrs. Uchiha had already turned back to her computer screen. "You've got gas."

Oh great. I headed out of the office toward the main dock where the gas pumps were. This meant that at some point today, one of the boys would look around the office and ask, "Who's got gas?" and another boy would answer, "Sakura has gas." With my luck, Itachi would be in on the joke too.

The office door opened behind me, and Mrs. Uchiha poked her head out.

"Sakura," she called, "Did you want to talk?"

Noooo. Nothing of the sort. I'd just sought her out in the office and tried to start a conversation. Mrs. Uchiha had three sons. She was clueless when it came to talking to girls. My mother had died in a boating accident out on the lake when I was four. I was clueless when it came to talking to women. Any conversation we had was doomed from the start.

"No, why?" I asked without turning around. I had been galloping down the stairs before, but now I stepped very carefully, as if the steps were liable to break at any time.

"Watch out around the boys," she warned me.

I waved my hand dismissively. I didn't need to watch out around the boys. If anything those boys should watch out around _me_.

Aside from having the boys discussing my intestinal problems, I enjoyed having gas. I got to sit around on the dock and dip my feet into the water, enjoying the beautiful weather. Later on, I'd go swimming upstream from the gasoline. Not now though, before Itachi had seen me for the first time this summer. I would be getting in and out of the water and windy boats all day and I knew that my hair would end up looking like hell. So I wanted Itachi to see me before that, with nice, dry, styled hair. I might go swimming _after_ he saw me, while I waited for people to come to the gas pumps.

A lot of rich people from the bigger cities owned summer houses around the lake, and the richer they were, the less they actually knew about their boats. Like how to dock it and find their gas caps. If I covered for their idiocy in front of their families by giggling and saying things like, "I'm so sorry, sir! _I'm_ the one who's supposed to be helping _you_!" They tipped me beyond belief.

I was just tucking an especially large tip in my pocket when Itachi and Sasuke came zooming across the water in a boat emblazoned with UCHIHA'S MARINA down the side, blasting Three Days Grace from the speakers. They turned hard at the edge of the idle zone (a zone Mr. Uchiha had established to keep the boys from driving too recklessly.) Huge waves rocked the floating dock and would have thrown me off if I hadn't grabbed on to the railing. Then the bow of the boat eased up against the padded side of the dock. Sasuke must have been the one driving. Itachi would have driven up to the warehouse, closer to where they'd have to pick up their next boat for delivery. I could hear them arguing about this as Itachi threw me the rope to tie the stern to the dock. Itachi and Sasuke argued 24/7. I was used to it. But I would have rather not heard Itachi complaining that they were going to have to walk an extra fifty yards and up the stairs just so Sasuke could say hi to me.

Itachi jumped off the boat onto the dock, and the dock rocked under his weight. He was big, around six feet tall, and even though he'd worked all summer at the marina, his fair skin was only slightly tanned. His chest and arms were hard and muscled from competing with Sasuke the last four years to see who could lift the most weight (Itachi and Sasuke were like this.) Then he straightened and smiled his beautiful smile at me, and I forgave him instantly.

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**End of Chapter 1.**

(1) Sorry NaruSaku lovers. They're strictly platonic in this story.

(2) In the manga, Shisui is actually Sasuke and Itachi's cousin, and Itachi's best friend. I needed three brothers for this story, and I was already using Itachi and Sasuke, and Shisui was the only other Uchiha I could think to use (that was in relatively the same age group.)

(3) 55378008 = Boobless

**[IMPORTANT NOTE(S):**

**This plot-line does NOT belong to me. It belongs to the wonderful Jennifer Echols and her book The Boys Next Door. I'm merely borrowing it and playing with it for my own amusement. **

**Alright, I know some (most) of you are like wtf I thought this was supposed to be SasuSaku! Why does she like Itachi?! Etc., etc. **

**BELIEVE ME, IT IS SASUSAKU! **

**You have to keep reading. I can't say too much without revealing the whole plot, but I implore you to keep reading. It will eventually be SasuSaku. Things'll start heating up in the later chapters (around chapter 6 or 7) so stick with it! (^_^) ]**

Constructive criticism and reviews are greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much for reading.

xx Bethany


	2. Stage Two: Bikini

**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the plot. They both belong to their respective owners. The characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto and the plot belongs to Jennifer Echols, and her book "The Boys Next Door".**

_Reuploaded: 11/21/2012_

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_Crossed the line, and didn't mean to, I take it back_

_I thought I'd make it work, never did, but I meant to_

_I, I, I give up_

My Worst Nightmare by Forever The Sickest Kids

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"Hey, Pinky," he said to me. I got a close up view of his beautiful black eyes and pale skin as he threw his arms around me and walked right over me. I was forced—but very willing—to throw my arms around him, too, to keep from falling down.

"Oh, pardon me," he said as he pulled me out from underneath him and set me on my feet.

"That's quite alright," I managed to use the same fake-formal tone. His warm hands around my waist made thinking _very_ difficult. My stomach sent ecstatic messages to my brain, something along the lines of, _Oh my God, he's touching me! Are you getting this? He's touching me! _Which in turn put my whole body on high alert. My heart thumped painfully, just like it did in my dream.

But when I looked up into his eyes, I saw that his gaze was on the stairs leading up to the marina, and that his interest was gone. If I hadn't known any better, I would have thought Itachi was flirting with me. But I did know better. That was how he treated all girls.

He slid out of my grasp —vise-like grip—and made his way toward the stairs. "See you later, Junior," he tossed over his shoulder at me as he climbed the stairs to the marina.

When we were kids, the boys all used to have nicknames for each other, kind of like a secret club, where a nickname meant you were a part of the club. Being the only girl, I was excluded from the club, and therefore I didn't get a nickname. But I wanted one. I _wanted_ them to accept me. Somehow, Mrs. Uchiha must have found out about it, because she forced Itachi and the other boys to include me in their games. The boys decided, since I was a tag along, I would just have the same nickname as my brother, but they tacked on "Junior" so that things wouldn't get confusing. Then, one day, Itachi had a sudden epiphany, and realized for the first time that I had _pink hair_. Gasp! So, he started calling me "Pinky", but thankfully it never really caught on with the other boys. If there was one thing I hated more than being considered a tag along, it was my hair color.

After a while, my nickname just got shortened down to "Junior" and occasionally "Pinky" (Although, I really only let Itachi get away with calling me by it. No one else can call me Pinky without incurring my wrath.) Once the boys hit puberty, the nicknames fizzled out, until I was the only one left with mine. One that I have yet to outgrow it seems.

This is the kind of thing I was up against. Itachi only saw me as my brother's pink-haired little sister and not my brother's super-hot-and-sexy little sister/woman of his dreams. Sigh.

I watched the muscles ripple beneath the fair skin of his legs as he climbed the stairs. Itachi was obviously unmoved by the temptation of my red tank top. Time for Plan B. Otherwise known as Stage Two: Bikini. When we went wakeboarding this afternoon, Itachi was in for the surprise of a lifetime.

The dock dipped as Sasuke hopped out of the boat. I turned to greet him. We did our secret handshake, one that we'd been adding to for years: the basic shake (first grade), upside down (second grade), high five (fourth grade), low five (fifth grade), knuckle pound (seventh grade), pinky swear (eighth grade) and elbows touching (ninth grade). We'd do the secret handshake anywhere, like when we passed each other in the hallways at school, or on the sidelines during Sasuke's football games. Even if Sasuke claimed it was "uncool" for two almost-sixteen year olds to still be doing a secret handshake, I know he secretly enjoyed it.

All the girls on the girls' tennis team fetched water and bandages for the boys' football team during their games, which was totally sexist and unfair, because you don't see the boys coming down to fetch _us_ water and bandages at _our_ matches. But I never complained, because I enjoyed standing on the sidelines during the games, because that's where all the action happens. The secret handshake had proven surprisingly hard to do when Sasuke was wearing football pads. Nevertheless, we'd made it work.

But Sasuke had gotten together with Hinata a month ago, and ever since I'd heard a rumor that she didn't want her boyfriend doing the secret handshake with "that hoe next door," I'd tried to cool it on doing the secret handshake in public. After all, if it had been me, I wouldn't want my boyfriend doing a secret handshake with anybody but me. Especially if he looked like Sasuke.

Because Sasuke basically looked like Itachi. Smooth pale skin that never seemed to tan, smoldering dark eyes, soft dark hair, Sasuke was definitely hot. But he was no Itachi. Up close and in daylight, you would never mistake them for each other. Their facial features were different. However, at night or from a distance, all bets were off.

They both wore their hair differently, too. Sasuke's hair was shorter and slightly spiked up in the back— and constantly falling in his eyes—while Itachi wore his hair longer and usually kept it tied back into a small ponytail at the nape of his neck. But if they were both windblown in the extreme, like they are now, it was hard to tell. If you happened to be watching from your bedroom window as they beat the crap out of each other at the edge of their yard where their mom couldn't see them—not that I ever _did_ anything like that—the only way you could tell them apart was because Itachi was slightly more filled out and a bit taller, being two years older. Also, they walked differently: Itachi cruised suavely, while Sasuke bounced like a ball that had gotten away from you and into the street.

But the one thing I always used to tell them apart instantly, when I could see it, was Sasuke's skull-and-crossbones pendant on a leather cord. I'd bought the pendant when we were twelve, from a gumball machine. It was the result of one of my—many—failed attempts at becoming more girly. I'd been going for the Mary-Kate and Ashley pendant for myself, but instead I'd gotten the skull-and-crossbones. So I'd given it to Sasuke because it was made for him.

Suddenly, I realized I was standing on the sun-warmed dock, still touching elbows with Sasuke, and staring at his skull-and-crossbones pendant. When I looked up into his obsidian eyes, I found that _he_ was staring at _my_ neck, too. No, wait. Lower.

I smirked internally, "What'cha starin' at?" I asked.

Sasuke cleared his throat and averted his eyes. "Tank top, huh?"

_Yes!_ That was Sasuke's seal of approval. Like, _Last day of school, huh? _or, _Fast and Furious, huh? _Granted, he wasn't Itachi, but he was made of the same material. This was a good sign.

I pressed him for more information, "What _about_ my tank top?"

"It's red." He wouldn't meet my eyes, choosing instead to stare out across the lake, giving me a good view of his profile and the suspiciously pink flush on his cheek. Damn it! I had embarrassed the _wrong boy_. I guess it was back to the football t-shirt for me.

No. I had to stay strong. Now was not the time to worry about this. I had bigger fish to fry.

"Look," I told Sasuke, as if he hadn't already looked, "Itachi's leaving at the end of the summer to go to university. Yeah, yeah, he'll be back next summer, but I don't think I'll be able to compete once he's had a taste of university life and university _girls_. It's now or never, Sasuke. And desperate times call for desperate tank tops."

Sasuke opened his mouth to speak, but I shut him up by raising my hand. Changing my voice to a deep guy-like imitation of his, I said "I don't know why you'd want to hook up with that jerk." We seemed to be having this conversation more and more often as of late. I cleared my throat, and said in my normal voice, "I just do, okay? Just let me do it, and don't get in my way. Stay out of my net, little dolphin." I tried to bump his hip with my hip, but due to my being vertically challenged, I ended up bumping him somewhere around his mid-thigh. He stared down at me, arms crossed in front of his chest, trying to look serious. He pressed his lips together, trying to look grim, but I could tell that he was trying not to laugh. "Don't call me that."

"Why not?"

"There are no dolphins in the lake." He stated matter-of-factly, although I knew it wasn't the dolphin part he had a problem with. The man-child inside of him didn't enjoy being called "little" anything. Typical male.

I rolled my eyes, "Fine then, little brim. Little bass."

He turned and walked toward the stairs.

"Little minnow."

He turned back. "What if Itachi _actually_ asked you out?"

I resent that. He makes it sound like it's the most remote possibility ever. Like I've only got a one in a million chance or something. What happened to supportive friends? "You act like that's the most remote possi—"

"When he rides in the truck, he has to keep the sunroof open just to make room for his big head. Where would you sit?"

I blinked and looked at him innocently, "In his lap?"

A look of disgust flashed across his face before he jogged up the stairs, making the old wooden planks creak under his weight. Even though Sasuke seemed to be putting up a lot of resistance to the idea of me getting together with Itachi, I knew he wouldn't try to sabotage it or anything. Sasuke and I had always been great friends. When we were younger, and the boys would try to pick on us, we'd stood up for each other as best we could. The idea of me hooking up with Itachi only bothered him because Sasuke hated Itachi with the intensity of the hottest flames of Hell, and the feeling was mutual.

Later on, as I was helping another clueless customer shove off, I heard the planks creaking behind me. Itachi alert! Sensory overload! Never mind, I saw the skull-and-crossbones pendant and realized it was only Sasuke.

As if on cue, Itachi puttered past us in another boat, blasting Crossfade instead of Three Days Grace, and looking smokin' hot with his sunglasses on, his lightly tanned chest polished by the sun. He waited until he reached the very edge of the idle zone (Mr. Uchiha must have been watching to make sure the boys actually idled in the idle zone) before flooring it and taking off across the lake to make another delivery.

I was so busy fantasizing about Itachi that I completely forgot that Sasuke stood behind me until he tickled my ribs. In fact, I was so surprised that I would have fallen in the lake, if Sasuke hadn't wrapped his arm around my waist to catch me. This was the second time a boy had touched my bare stomach today, and it was a little anticlimactic.

Don't get me wrong—the feeling of his fingers on my stomach was pleasant. Very pleasant, in fact. But I knew he was just being friendly, brotherly even. I knew that he was completely devoted to Hinata, and he knew that I was completely devoted to Itachi. It was like having a craving for ice cream, but having french fries instead. Sure, the french fries were good, but you were left with an odd taste in your mouth, and you still wanted that ice cream.

Yum... ice cream.

For the rest of the morning, I pumped gas, and worked on my mini-tan through my SPF 50 sunscreen. At lunchtime, I went up to the marina and ate the egg salad sandwich and cucumber slices Mrs. Uchiha had prepared for me for lunch, while I watched _What Not to Wear_. I ate excruciatingly slowly, taking one nibble of food at a time, trying to draw out my lunch as long as humanly possible, in hopes that mine and Itachi's lunch breaks might coincide. After Mrs. Uchiha looked in on me for the twelfth time, I got the hint and headed back down to man the gas pumps. Of course, _that's_ when Itachi and Sasuke roared up to the marina in the boat.

I gave up. Now that Itachi had seen me at least once with my nice, clean hair, I figured it was safe to go swimming. I use the term _safe_ with caution. I knew from experience that before you went swimming off the docks at the beginning of the summer, you had to make sure to check the sides and ladder for bryozoa, colonies of slimy green critters that grew on hard underwater surfaces. Think of coral, but gelatinous. _Gross_. They weren't actually harmful creatures, and their presence in the lake meant that the lake's water was pristine and unpolluted, blah, blah, blah. None of this was of any consolation if you actually _touched_ them. So after poking around with a spare water ski and finding nothing, I deemed it safe enough to go swimming, and spent the rest of the afternoon watching for Itachi from the water.

And getting out occasionally when he drove by, in order to woo him like Halle Berry in that James Bond movie—the one I'd seen with the boys approximately one hundred times: bikini scene, six hundred times.

Sometimes Itachi was driving. Sometimes it was Sasuke. Since I was too far away to see the skull and crossbones, the only way I could tell them apart was that Sasuke was the one waving, and Itachi was the one looking hot and mysterious behind his sunglasses. Maybe Itachi was watching me, and just trying to _appear_ like he wasn't moved by my newborn self.

Right. That probably wasn't it at all, mostly because I never seemed to be able to time my exit from the water quite right when he drove by. Halle Berry makes it look too easy. So in case they turned around, I'd have to make it appear as if I'd meant to get out all along, for reasons other than driving Itachi wild with lust.

Oh—hair flip—I'd meant to get out all along to read these teen fashion magazines, like any other normal almost-sixteen year old girl. I spent my time examining the pictures and checking the info against what I'd seen on _What Not to Wear_, plus my own common sense. Being fashionable was all well and good, but if you ended up looking like a hobo or a circus tent, it wasn't really fulfilling its purpose.

Around four o'clock, I started to make my way towards the warehouse. I knew the boys wouldn't come and pick me up in the boat to save me the trip. Well, Sasuke might, if it were up to him. But it wasn't up to him.

The boys were all in the warehouse—Shisui, Itachi, Sasuke and my brother all stood in a line in their board shorts, pitching the equipment we'd need into the boat. Shisui, Sasuke, and Naruto were all half-turned towards Itachi as he relayed some amusing story to them that was probably only partially true. In fact, they didn't seem to notice, but Itachi had stopped working all together, and they were just passing the equipment along in front of him. Itachi's sole purpose was to entertain.

It wasn't fair. I wanted Itachi to entertain _me_, too. I loved to listen to his stories, because the way he told it, a trip to the gas station sounded like something out of an _American Pie _movie. But I had to focus. I had a job to do. It was time to implement Stage Two: Bikini. I dropped my backpack, and then took off my tank top to reveal my bikini.

I balled up my tank top, and threw it into the boat. Putting on the girliest voice I could manage, I squealed, "Heeeeey!" and gave Shisui, whom I hadn't seen since he'd returned from university a few days earlier, a big hug. He returned the hug cautiously, trying—and failing—to avoid looking at my boobs. The expression on my brother's face looked as if he wanted to get my dad to send me back to the shrink.

Time for the final step. I turned my back to the boys, bent over, and dropped my shorts. I threw those into the boat, too, and turned back around. Was I ever in for a shock.

What I'd been aiming for was for Itachi to see me as more than the little girl I used to be, and my brother's little sister. I'd wanted him to _stare_ at me and finally realize I was the girl of his dreams. But I hadn't factored the other boys into the equation. And now that all three of them were staring at me, eyes wide and mouths agape, I began to feel a little self-conscious.

When they continued to stare, I began to wonder if there was something wrong. Like, if I had dropped some egg salad on myself, or _worse_—an exposed nipple.

But I didn't feel a breeze, and I knew that if I took a quick glance down to check for food, the spell on the boys would be broken, and I wasn't ready to be turned back into a pumpkin, yet. So I snapped my fingers and said, "Zone, much?" Which really meant, _I'm hot, I know. Hmph._

Sasuke cleared his throat, and turned to Itachi, "Bikini, huh?"

Itachi, who had yet to take his eyes off my chest, slowly dragged his eyes up to meet mine. He gestured towards my bikini with a hand flourish eerily similar to that of Clinton from _What Not to Wear_, "That does a lot for you."

While I was internally doing a little happy dance because Itachi _finally_ seemed to have noticed me, I smirked and replied without missing a beat. "No, Itachi. _I_ do a lot for the _bikini_."

Shisui snorted and shoved Itachi. Sasuke shoved him in the opposite direction. Itachi had an adorably perplexed expression on his face, as if he couldn't think of any comeback, which was almost unthinkable for him.

Throughout this whole exchange, my brother was standing awkwardly off on the sidelines, looking like he'd rather be anywhere but there. While I had given a lot of thought into my whole plan for winning over Itachi, I hadn't thought of the reactions of my brother, or anyone else. I wanted to be Itachi's girlfriend, but I didn't want to lose my relationships with the others in exchange.

"Team calisthenics," Naruto called. I understood that he wanted to change the subject, but I'd really hoped we'd be able to skip team calisthenics now that we were all grown up. Mr. Uchiha used to make us do push-ups together before every boat outing, reasoning that, the stronger we were, the less likely we were to get hurt. When my brother and Shisui got their boaters licenses' and we started going without Mr. Uchiha, we continued doing push-ups. It was a good way for the older boys to keep Sasuke and me in our places.

No hesitation, no complaint—this was all part of the game. I dropped on my hands on the concrete wharf just as fast as the rest of them, and started doing push-ups. All five of us did our push-ups, heads close together, with limited grunting at first. And absolutely no grunting from me or from Sasuke. We stayed in shape, because we cared about the calisthenics.

And because we were both in training for sports. Sasuke might be a starter for the football team this year. And I was just trying not to get kicked off the tennis team by an incoming freshman. Sure, my game was good, but I was nowhere near as good as Anko or Hana, who'd just graduated, or Ino, who was a senior and would be team captain this year. Plus, I'd had a bit of an unfortunate incident last year. I didn't train all winter, went to our first meet, overexerted myself, and ended up barfing all over the court. I ended up winning the match, but no one seems to remember that part. Since then, I'd made sure to stay in shape.

Today I held my own in push-ups. After about fifty, I was nowhere near my limit. Shisui's grunting increased. I tried to keep concentrated and only focus on myself, but Shisui was pretty hard to ignore. His face turned red. His arms trembled, and he finally collapsed on his stomach. My brother, who hadn't grunted or trembled quite as much, took this as an opportunity to lie down on his stomach, too, hoping no one would notice as Shisui drew their attention.

Shisui cursed. "Damn it. I just can't seem to get my ass in gear today."

Between push-ups, I breathed, "That's twelve ounces too much partying for the both of you."

Shisui scrambled towards me across the dock, and I knew I was in trouble, but there was no time to run away. One of his arms circled my waist, and the other held my legs together so I couldn't squirm or, better yet, kick him in the gut. He took two steps towards the edge of the wharf.

I'd learned after sixteen years growing up with boys, there was no use pleading or screaming. I'd learned to control my natural girl-reactions a long time ago. It wasn't until he'd pitched me off the edge that I realized I _did_ want to react like a girl today. And that I hadn't screened this area for bryozoa. "Eeee—"

I plunged in. Almost before my toes touched the bottom, I was pushing my way up towards the surface and the platform on the back of the boat, because it was less likely to harbor bryozoa than the rest of the wharf. Ugh, ugh, ugh, I could almost feel a heinous mass squishing past my skin—but I managed to make it to the surface safely.

I slapped myself mentally as I hauled myself onto the platform at the back of the boat. If I'd really pulled off my "new Sakura" thing, Shisui never would have thrown me into the lake. He would have been too afraid to touch me. I would have been too haughty and delicate. Well, at least on some level he acknowledged that I was a girl. If I had been Sasuke, he would have just shoved me off the wharf instead of picking me up.

As I stood on the platform, I realized I was now wearing a _wet_ bikini. I collected myself enough to try to make jumping into the boat look partially svelte. But no one was paying any attention to me. Both my brother and Shisui stood over Sasuke and Itachi, who were still doing push-ups.

Sasuke, eyes down, kept pushing himself up in a steady rhythm. Itachi watched Sasuke with a little smile and gritted teeth, his face turning redder and redder. The bulging muscles of Itachi's arms trembled.

Oh, shit. Itachi was going to _lose_.

* * *

End of Chapter 2.

Alright, so, a few of you are probably like: (O_o) WTF? SASUHINA?! ITASAKU?! I THOUGHT THIS WAS SASUSAKU!?

**IT IS! **

You have to keep reading. Everything will make sense in due time. I can't say too much without giving away the whole plot, but for those of you really turned off by the idea of SasuHina, DO NOT FEAR. It won't last. I PROMISE. Don't let the lack of SasuSaku interaction so far deter you from reading this story. All in due time, my friends. All in due time.

Constructive criticism and reviews are greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading!

xx Bethany


	3. I'm The Biggest

**Disclaimer: Last time I checked, I still wasn't the owner of these characters. Or this plot. They belong to their respective owners (M. Kishimoto & J. Echols) I'm just borrowing them. **

**So don't sue, 'kay? (^_^)**

* * *

_Wish that you would stop _

_Makin' my head spin_

_Over, and over, it's over _

_But what if we..._

_If we just pretend?_

Camera Shy by School Boy Humor

* * *

He fell to the concrete with a groan, followed by eleven choice curse words. Sasuke continued doing push-ups, probably because these games we played tended to change at the last minute. Itachi could claim that Sasuke was required to do five push-ups per year younger. Sasuke was no fool, he made sure of that. Itachi stood, and Sasuke was _still_ doing push-ups.

"We've created a monster," my brother said.

Sasuke did one last push-up for good measure before slowly standing up. He made a show of clapping the dust off his hands, then—_don't do it, Sasuke, don't make Itachi any angrier than he already is_—he gave Itachi a smirk.

"I don't believe this!" Shisui shouted. "You know what? I think Sasuke's taller, too! Here, stand back-to-back and let me measure you."

Itachi flat-out refused to stand back-to-back with Sasuke. The boys goaded him and called him names that I can't repeat, but had to do with him being a girl, the worst insult imaginable. So Sasuke and Itachi stood back-to-back, and, sure enough, Itachi was more muscular and filled out, but Sasuke was half an inch taller.

Sasuke turned and gave Itachi that grim look, with his jaw dropped, trying not to laugh. "I'm the biggest."

"Ohhhhhhhh!" Shisui and my brother moaned as if Sasuke had landed a good punch on Itachi in one of their boxing matches. I'll spare you the full five minutes of size jokes that ensued. Ino and some other girls on the tennis team had told me that they were jealous of me growing up around boys, because I had a window into how boys thought. This, friends, was the deep, dark secret. The size jokes continued on as if I wasn't there, or as if I wasn't a girl. I couldn't really decide which was worse.

Itachi smiled, wincing only slightly when the boys shoved him. That's one of the things I loved most about Itachi. He'd keep smiling no matter what the boys did. They knew that they wouldn't be able to break him. But they would try.

I was slightly concerned about what Itachi would do to Sasuke later as payback. Itachi didn't let Sasuke get away with things like this. But I supposed that was Sasuke's problem, the dumbass.

Disgusted with their crude jokes, I sat with my back to them in the boat. When they ran out of size jokes for the moment—they would think of more as the afternoon went on—they all piled into the boat and proceeded to argue about who would be the first to drive. The consensus was that Itachi would get to drive first, since he was a loser.

There was no chance that they would let _me_ drive. Sure, I'd gotten my boater's license when I turned fifteen, just like they did. But there was a little problem: I didn't know my left from my right. It was totally their fault, really. When I was five, they taught me how to water ski. No one actually expected me to get up, and stay up, on my first try. Therefore, I hadn't been properly instructed. I didn't know how to steer. Too terrified to let go of the rope, I'd run right into the dock, and broken my arm. My _right_ arm. I think that at the time, my brain must have just been learning how to differentiate between my left and my right, because, since then, I'd never been able to hear anyone yell, "Go left!" or, "Turn to the right!" without thinking, _Okay. I broke my right arm. This is my right arm. They want me to go this way_. And by the time I'd figured out which was my right and which was my left, I'd either missed the turn, or run the boy I was pulling into a tree. We'd found that out the hard way last summer, when I tried to pull Sasuke for the first time.

Itachi started the motor, and puttered the boat through the marina waters. Sasuke had the nerve to plop himself down in the seat across the aisle from me. Itachi reached the edge of the idle zone and cranked the boat to full speed. Sasuke called to me so softly that I almost didn't hear him over the noise of the boat motor, "Close your legs."

"Why? I waxed!" I checked just to make sure. Yup, I was clean. This was okay now, because Itachi was turned the other way, and wouldn't be able to hear me through all the noise. I spread my legs further and propped my arms up on the back of the seat, trying to take up as much room as possible, like a boy. I glanced over at Sasuke, "Does this make you uncomfortable?"

He eyed me warily. "Yes."

"Well, may I suggest that this is your problem, not mine?"

Sasuke licked his lips and leaned toward me, "If it prevents Itachi from asking you out, it will be _your _problem. And you'll _make_ it _my _problem."

I crossed my legs like a girl, "Point taken. By the way, thanks for staying out of my way. How the hell am I going to get Itachi to ask me out if he's all pissed off?"

Sasuke shrugged, looking completely unrepentant. "You wanted me to lose to him in team calisthenics? That opportunity was too sweet to pass up."

"You didn't have to win by quite so much, Sasuke. And you _definitely _didn't have to rub it in! You knew I needed him in a good mood!"

Sasuke smirked at me, "You wanted me to stop growing?"

I gave him my most un-amused look, "If you have nothing to talk about besides your large size, please say nothing at all."

So we sat in silence until Itachi slowed in the middle of the lake. Naruto sat on the platform, slipped his feet into the bindings on his wakeboard, and hopped into the water. Back when we were younger and the rest of us were still waterskiing, my brother and Shisui had discovered wakeboarding, and were the first to try it. Looking at them now, you'd think they'd never quite gotten the hang of it. My brother face-planted twice during his twenty minute run, and Shisui had a hard time even getting _up_. I was really starting to get worried.

Since we were kids, the five of us had spent our afternoons skiing and wakeboarding behind the UCHIHA'S MARINA boat, as advertisement for the business. Itachi had even managed to convince Mr. Uchiha to go all out on a boat specially designed for wakeboarding, which made bigger waves. Bars arched over the boat for attaching tow ropes, and speakers blasted Three Days Grace like it came on with the motor. (Once, I'd brought the first Kelly Clarkson CD, and asked the boys to play it instead of Three Days Grace while we wakeboarded. They'd laughed in my face and called me Miss Independent for months afterwards.)

We held summer exhibitions on the lake during all the major holidays, like the Fourth of July and Labor Day. But our most important show would be in two weeks, at the Crappy Festival, because that was when sales of boats and other equipment were the highest at the marina. Okay, it wasn't actually called the _Crappy_ festival. Its real name was the Crappie Festival—pronounced more like _croppie_—named after a species of fish that lived in the lake. The Crappie Festival had a Crappie Queen and a Crappie Bake-Off, and a Crappie Toss, in which people from town competed to see who could throw a dead fish farthest down the lake shore. A few years ago, Itachi had started calling it the Crappy Festival, and the name kind of just stuck. It sounded a lot more fun that way.

But the festival would be absolutely no fun if we kept wakeboarding like _this_! Sure, none of us had been out on the lake since Labor Day last summer, but I hadn't expected my brother and Shisui to be quite as terrible as they were. And since Itachi would be watching me now, I hoped I'd be the one to break the cycle.

I strapped on a life vest over my bikini. Pity having to cover up a shapely body like mine (snort). I strapped my feet tightly into my bindings, and hopped into the water. I assumed my stance, crouched with my wakeboard in front of me, knees spread. I really wished my brother would putter the boat away from me a little faster. Talk about needing to close my legs! It was this embarrassing stance that had caused me to get up too quickly and face-plant more times than I cared to count, just to save myself the jokes from the boys.

Not today though. I relaxed and spread my knees even further. Anyone care for an eyeful? I gave Sasuke, who was spotting, the okay sign. Itachi and Shisui watched me, too, as concerned as I was that we _all _sucked, and Mr. Uchiha would pull the plug on our afternoon wakeboarding outings. Alright, relax Sakura. No pressure. When my brother finally started the engine, I relaxed into it and let the boat pull me up.

Wakeboarding was fairly simple. I stood on the wakeboard like a skateboard, and held on to the rope like I would if I were waterskiing. The boat motor left a triangular wake behind it as the boat moved through the water. I moved outside the wake by going over one of the small waves. Then I turned back inward and used one wave as a skateboarding ramp to take off. I sailed over the wake and used the wave on the opposite side as a ramp to land.

After a while I forgot about the boys watching me, even Itachi. The drone of the motor could do that to me like nothing else: put me in this zone. Even though I was attached to the boat and the outside world by a rope, I felt all alone with myself. It was just me, the water, and the wakeboard.

My only intention for our wakeboarding trip today was to just get my wakeboarding legs back. Maybe I'd try some tricks when I went out tomorrow. I didn't want to get cocky and end up busting ass in front of Itachi. But since my turn was going so well, I figured I'd try a couple of easy ones—a front flip, a scarecrow—and there was no busting of ass. So I tried a backroll. And landed it _solidly_.

_Now_ I got cocky. I did a heelside backroll with a nosegrab, which meant that in the middle of the flip, I took one hand off the rope, and grabbed the front edge of the board. This served no real purpose in the trick, except looking impressive, as if to say, _This trick only appears difficult. I have all the time in the world. I think I'll grab the board. Yawn._ And I landed it, too. This was getting too good to be true.

My brother swung the boat around just before we reached the graffiti-covered bridge that spanned the lake. Shisui had spray-painted his and his girlfriend's names on the bridge, alongside those of the other couples, and over top of the faded ones. My genius brother had tried to paint his own name but he'd run out of space on that section of the bridge.

NARUT

O

Itachi was too wise to ever paint his girlfriends' names on the bridge. He'd have to change them too often. I thank God that last summer, when all this spray-painting action was going on, I'd still been too short to reach over from the pile and haul myself up on to the main part of the bridge. I probably had the height and upper body strength to do it now, but I prayed that none of the boys pointed this out. If they did, I'd have to get up there and spray-paint SAKURA LOVES ITACHI for the whole world to see. And promptly move to Canada.

Now that I thought about it, it was kind of strange that Sasuke hadn't already painted his and Hinata's names together on the bridge. Maybe he just didn't consider it daring enough if Shisui had managed to do it. Sasuke _had _painted WASH ME in bright red letters at the very center of the bridge. Our lake experience just wouldn't be the same without the bridge. It would have been really cool to wakeboard underneath it, but it was too dangerous to drive the boat under the bridge and tow a rider at the same time. We'd found that out the hard way. (Sasuke: seventh grade.)

My brother pointed the boat for the rail. A few summers ago, the boys had taken the guts out of an old pontoon boat—also emblazoned with UCHIHA'S MARINA down the side. They'd anchored it close to the shore, and built a rail sticking out from it, topped with PVC pipe. You could seriously injure yourself on this contraption (Sasuke: eighth grade) but my ride was going great, and I was feeling confident. I zoomed away from the boat, popped up onto the rail, and slid across it, landing nice and softly on the other side.

Sasuke raised both his fists in the air. (That's nice, but no love from Itachi?) If he yelled something, I couldn't hear it over the noise of the boat motor. What I could hear though, was our neighbors—the Watanabe's and the Sato's—and their kids out on their docks. They came out to watch us practice most afternoons. _Cha-ching_! That was two sales as good as made for Uchiha's Marina once their kids were old enough.

After that came my family's dock, the Uchiha's own dock, and finally the marina. I could see that my dad was home from work. He and Mr. Uchiha were sitting in lawn chairs on the marina dock, holding beers. I definitely shouldn't have done this if I was trying to be ladylike, but this opportunity was too sweet to pass up, and as the saying goes: old habits die hard. I veered off course and headed straight for the dock.

My dad saw me coming and knew exactly what was going to happen. He jumped up from his seat and ran toward the shore—his tie flapping over his shoulder—so I wouldn't ruin his business suit. He didn't think to warn Mr. Uchiha, who sat nonchalantly sipping his beer as I slid past, spraying a wall of water fifteen feet high behind me.

The wall of water smacked right on top of him. I didn't want to turn back for fear of losing my balance, falling, and ruining the effect (much like the egg salad on bikini effect.) But I did catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye, soaked to the bone, beer halted in mid-air.

I'm sure Itachi could hear me cackling all the way up in the boat. Oh yeah, I practically ooze sex appeal and sophistication. I took a deep breath to stem my laughter and calm myself. I wanted to try an air raley. It was a maneuver that I'd been working up to last summer, but I'd never managed to land. If there was anything keeping Itachi from asking me out, it was probably the memory of me wiping out after an air raley. If the maneuver was done correctly, I would hang in the air for a few second with my board above my head, before sailing down the opposite wake and landing sweetly. Done incorrectly, it was a high-speed belly flop.

When I busted ass (or stomach, whichever the case may be), Itachi and the other boys would make fun of me incessantly for it for the rest of the boat ride. Not only that, but they would usually spread it around at their party that night, too. But they were so far away, and the drone of the boat motor was like a bubble around me. Nothing could hurt me here, not in my little bubble.

I gestured upward, which told Sasuke to tell my brother to speed up. Sasuke knew exactly what I meant to do, and shook his head at me. What a pain, to have to stop the boat and _argue_ with him about it. It wasn't like _he_ ever consulted anyone before _he_ tried a trick and busted ass. I nodded my head vigorously and tried to telepathically send him my _little dolphin_ warning. He must have gotten the message because he shook his finger at me—he, of all people, trying to scold _me_. The hypocrite! —and turned to talk to my brother.

The drone pitched higher, telling me that my brother had in fact gotten the message to speed up. I relaxed and let the boat and the wave do the work for me. My muscles remembered what they'd tried to do last summer, and this time they _got_ it. I caught tons of air, a huge adrenaline rush, and one glance at the boat: all four boys stared up at me, mouths wide open. I almost panicked as I lost my balance when my board reached its high point. Keyword: _almost_. I kept myself together and rode down the opposite wave.

Immediately I arced back out to pick up more speed, and did a 360 with a grab. Landed it. Then a 540. Landed that, too.

I figured I must be pushing my luck. Knowing me, I'd break my leg trying to get back in the boat. Plus, I didn't want to be so sore the next day that I wouldn't be able to ride at all. I signaled to Sasuke that I was stopping and dropped the rope.

As the sound of the motor faded away and I sank into the warm water of the lake, I could hear them clapping for me. All four of them were standing up in the boat, facing me and cheering for me, "Way to go, Junior!"

I've never been so happy in my life.

And it got _better_.

* * *

**End of Chapter 3**

If you have any questions about the wakeboarding and what not, feel free to ask and I'll try to explain it as best I can.

Thanks go to my beta for this chapter!

Constructive criticism is appreciated, as are reviews.

Thanks for reading!

xx Bethany


	4. The Big Kahuna Has Spoken

**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters (they belong to Masashi Kishimoto) nor do I own the plot (it belongs to Jennifer Echols)**

**So don't sue. (^_^) **

* * *

_Doing all I can do_

_Just to be close to you_

_Every time that we meet_

_I skip a heartbeat_

Heartbeat by Scouting For Girls

* * *

I bent over in the water to untie the bindings on my wakeboard. I slipped my feet out of them, and with my wakeboard in front of me, I swam back towards the boat. As I reached the platform, Itachi extended a hand down to help me up—which was a totally unnecessary gesture seeing as how I'd climbed up onto this platform thousands of times before with no assistance. But it's the thought that counts.

"I taught her everything she knows," he said, loudly enough for all the boys to hear, but looking only at me. He smiled his beautiful smile at me, a secret smile for only the two of us, and sat back down in the boat.

"That's bullshit." Shisui said.

"Yeah! I was the one who helped her the most with the air raley last summer." My brother said.

"Tough act to follow," Sasuke told me as he shrugged on his life vest. I would have treasured that comment forever if I hadn't been high on Itachi.

I peeled off my life vest, dropped it on the floor of the boat and sat down daintily in the seat that Sasuke had just vacated. As if my fingers had a mind of their own, they curled inward and rubbed my palm where Itachi had touched me. My whole body tingled. But maybe that was just my muscles tingling from how hard I'd worked them out on the water. Regardless, I felt so content and relaxed just then, sitting in the sunshine. I really wished Sasuke wasn't stepping in for his turn.

Because watching Sasuke wakeboard was definitely _not _relaxing. It was, in fact, the opposite of relaxing, because Sasuke wasn't careful when he wakeboarded. He wasn't careful in general, really. His life was like one big episode of _Jackass_. He'd do anything on a dare, so the boys dared him a lot. My role in this whole game was to run and tell their mom. If I'd been able to run faster as a child, I could have saved Sasuke from several injuries, not the least of which included: a broken arm, several cracked ribs, and a couple snake bites.

Knowing this, it really didn't make much sense for Mr. Uchiha to let us wakeboard as advertisement for the marina. But, we'd really only come to wakeboarding gradually. When we started out, it was more like, _Oh look at those young kids on water skis. Isn't that cute? _Once, the local newspaper ran a picture of Sasuke and I waterskiing double, each of us holding up the national flag. Don't worry. You can laugh now, I can take it.

But Mr. Uchiha was no fool. He knew that things had changed. After Sasuke broke his collarbone for the second time, Mr. Uchiha put us under strict orders to not get injured. It was bad for the business. Customers wouldn't be so eager to buy a boat and all the equipment to go with it if they watched us die a long, watery death. So, to enforce the no injuries rule, the punishment for bleeding in the boat was that you had to clean the boat afterwards. Needless to say, Sasuke ended up cleaning the boat a _lot_ last summer.

At the end of the rope, Sasuke signaled to me that he was ready to go. I informed Shisui, who was driving, but he started the boat too slow, and Sasuke tried to get up too fast. "Down," I called.

"Come on, LD," Itachi muttered, as if Sasuke were right in front of him. Even though I'd heard this joke countless times before, and didn't find it funny in the slightest, I made sure to look over at Itachi and laugh until he saw me laughing. He chuckled too.

Sasuke had Attention Deficit Disorder. That's why we didn't have any classes together at school. I was in all advanced classes, while Sasuke definitely wasn't. He was incredibly smart, even with ADD, but the disorder prevented him from being able to concentrate long enough on his school work. The boys had a field day with Sasuke's condition, calling him ADD to his face. Or they'd call him LD (for Learning Disability) or SAS (for Short Attention Span) or Sassy or Sassafras. They told him that the short bus was coming for him. Sasuke didn't like taking his medication, because he said it made him feel like he was dead, so in other words, Sasuke was perfectly happy with ADD. Or he _would_ have been, if the other boys had let him.

Sometimes, I wondered if he took stupid risks to make up for his disorder. Or maybe he was just like that. The skull-and-crossbones pendant really was perfect for him. The boys used to joke that if he improved his grades, once he graduated, he'd be able to apply to pirate school.

Shisui circled around and straightened out the tow rope. I told him Sasuke was ready to go. This time they got it right and Sasuke got up. Immediately he told me to speed up, and I told Shisui. Sasuke did a tantrum to blind, which meant that he back-flipped where he couldn't see, and landed with his back to the boat. Sasuke preferred tricks with a blind landing. Sasuke told me to speed up again, and I told Shisui. Sasuke did a turn to blind and touched down on the edge of his board, _just _managing not to wipe out.

"Nice save!" Naruto called.

"Dumb luck," Itachi said.

I laughed again. I knew I would feel guilty later about laughing at Itachi's mean jokes, but when I was there with him, and he was being so charming, I couldn't help but laugh.

When I looked back at Sasuke again, he was in the middle of a 540 to blind, which was all well and good. But, for the love of God, he barely had time to land before he hit the rails on the pontoon boat! I waved at him and swiped my finger across my throat: _cut it out_. He signaled for me to speed up.

I turned to Shisui, "Sasuke would like to spend this summer in traction. Speed up."

I turned back in my seat to watch Sasuke again, only to find _Itachi _leaning across the aisle watching _me_. "Cold?" He asked.

Oh yeah. The ninety (1) degree afternoon, coupled with the ninety percent humidity chilled me right down to the bone. But one singular haughty brain cell in the back of my mind told me that Itachi was _flirting_ with me, and I should feign helplessness.

"I'm _freezing_!" I squealed. Just like that, _Itachi Uchiha_ slid across the aisle and scooted against me until I made room for him in the seat. He slung his hot arm around my bare shoulders, and I died and went to heaven.

Well, without the awkward dying part, that is. I felt dazed, probably due to a lack of oxygen caused by my hyperventilation. Suddenly, I realized that Sasuke had been gesturing wildly for several seconds trying to get my attention. He signaled to me to slow down. I told Shisui.

Sasuke did a front flip. Itachi said in my ear, "Gosh, I've never seen anyone do _that _before. Makes me want to buy a wakeboard from Uchiha's Marina!" Sasuke told me to slow down once more, and I told Shisui.

Sasuke did a backroll with a grab. Itachi put his hand on my bare thigh, and whispered in my ear, "You don't believe that Sasuke's bigger than me, right?"

This statement threw me off. I was used to hearing locker room humour, after all, I grew up with four boys. But I wasn't used to having the locker room humour directed at _me_, used to flirt with _me_. Especially by Itachi. This was the whole point of Stage Two: Bikini, but I had a hard time believing it worked this fast. Was I reading him wrong? Sasuke gave me the thumbs-down, and I told Shisui to slow down again.

Just as I turned back around, I saw Sasuke launching into what could only be an S-bend, which was absolutely impossible to land with the boat going this slowly.

Itachi, Naruto and I all swore at the same time, and watched Sasuke's long, slow death-splash with interest and resignation.

"Down," I called to Shisui.

Itachi looked over at me, and gave me the most incredulous look, as if to say, _No shit_. I laughed out loud. He smiled at me as he found his wakeboard and slipped over the back of the boat onto the platform.

Sasuke emerged from the water and vaulted over the side of the boat. He stood close to my seat, dripping water on my formerly sun-dried self. He commented, "S-bend, huh?"

"_Huh_?" Shisui said, "What the hell were you thinking, trying to do an S-bend at that speed?"

"Sometimes I want to try new things," Sasuke said, "Things that I know are bad for me, just for fun. Don't you, Sakura?"

I glared up at him, giving him a look that said, _Stay out of my net, little dolphin_. He smirked back at me defiantly.

"Yeah, Sasuke." I said, "Sometimes I like to stick my finger in a light socket, just to see what'll happen."

He gave me a significant look, and without another word to me, he handed Itachi his life vest.

Itachi got up on his first try, no problem. He never attempted any tricks he couldn't do perfectly, which was why we always closed our exhibitions with him. We could count on him to do some impressive moves, without doing anything that was too hard for him to handle.

Which was why I watched in shock when, after he'd done a few easy tricks, he launched into an air raley. Surely he couldn't be doing this simply because _I'd_ done one! But maybe he was just teasing me, as if to say, anything you can do, I can do better.

Except he _couldn't _do it better. When his board reached its peak, he panicked and tried to overcorrect himself. By overcorrecting himself, he _did_ lose his balance and face-planted in the lake, with such force that it shook the pontoon boat with the splash.

"Down," called Shisui, who was spotting.

"I'd say," agreed my brother.

Sasuke, who was driving, brought the boat around. When he cut the motor and the music, he, my brother, and Shisui all stood up in the boat and hooted and clapped for Itachi almost as hard as they'd clapped for me. I wished they'd quit it. They were just going to make Itachi even more angry, and make flirting with him that much harder. Stupid boys.

Itachi smirked from the water. Even though he hadn't had a long turn, he'd clearly had enough. He tossed his life vest up into the boat and disappeared beneath the surface.

"What's he doing?" I muttered, leaning over the side of the boat looking for him. If the tow rope had gotten tangled, he might actually need help. And _someone_ would have to jump in to help him, maybe accidentally rubbing up against him in the process—

"_Boo_!" A handful of bryozoa rushed up at me from the lake.

I screamed (for once, I didn't have to think about a natural girl-reaction) and fell backwards into the boat. Itachi hefted himself up over the side of the boat, bryozoa held high in his left hand, dripping green slime through his fingers. He laughed evilly and came after me.

I squealed again. I couldn't believe that Itachi was actually flirting with me, but there was bryozoa involved. I paused at the edge of the boat, ready to throw myself into the lake. There was the chance that Itachi would chase me around the lake with the bryozoa, but at least it would be diluted. On second thought, I didn't really want to jump back into the very waters the bryozoa came from.

Itachi solved my dilemma for me. He came up behind me and showed me that he was holding my bikini ties in his free hand. If I jumped, Itachi would take possession of my bikini top.

_Damn it_. You know, I'd double-knotted my bikini top this morning, just in case my wildest dreams came true and Stage Two: Bikini worked so well that Itachi would try something like this. But I didn't really want my bikini top to come off in front of everyone, _no_, in front of _anyone_ for that matter. But, when I'd checked the ties over in the mirror, they looked stupid double-knotted. Now _I_ felt stupid.

Mentally I went through every curse word I could think of, berating myself for not going with the double knots after all. Itachi brought the slimy mass closer to my shoulder, and twisted my bikini ties in his fingers, "Go ahead. _Jump_."

"Itachi," Naruto's voice rang out in warning. I was surprised. My brother had never stuck up for me against the boys before. Although none of the boys had ever crossed this particular line.

But that was nothing compared to my surprise when the bryozoa was suddenly lobbed out of Itachi's hand. It sailed through the air, and landed in the lake. Sasuke, who was standing behind Itachi, had shoved his arm.

Which meant that I owed Sasuke my gratitude for saving me. Except, I didn't _want _to be saved from Itachi, and I thought I'd established that fact with our _little dolphin _talk. But, Itachi with _bryozoa_... that was an iffy situation. Therefore, I wasn't sure whether or not to give Sasuke the _little dolphin_ look when we made eye contact, but it didn't matter. When I turned around, he was already making his way back to the driver's seat.

_Itachi _was still watching me, though. And he never took his eyes off me, even as he wiped the bryozoa residue off his hand and onto my stomach. This was the third time a boy had touched my bare stomach today, but I was almost too disgusted to notice.

Through gritted teeth, as if any extra movement might cause the bryozoa to be spread further across my skin, I said, "I don't like you very much right now," and bailed over the side of the boat into the warm water of the lake—on the opposite side to that of the bryozoa. Deep in the water, I scrubbed at my stomach with both hands. A combination of Itachi germs and bryozoa: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Leaning more toward worst though, because I now had bryozoa all over my hands. I opened my eyes under water, and put my hands in front of me. I didn't _see_ any slime. Maybe it was all just in my head. But I scrubbed my hands together anyways.

Something dove into the water beside me in a rush of bubbles. I swam up for air. Itachi surfaced at the same time I did, tossing sparkling water droplets from his hair. "You still like me a lot, though, right?"

"Yeah, it's no big." Giving up on getting clean, I swam back toward the platform on the back of the boat. I'd definitely have to take a shower when I got home. And disinfect my stomach.

"I'll just have to make it up to you," he splashed close behind me, "Help you get clean. After all, we don't want you to be a dirty girl." He rubbed both his hands up and down my stomach underwater.

This was the _fourth _time a boy had touched my bare tummy! In one day, too! But it was very awkward. He was hovering so close behind me that I had a hard time treading water without kicking him. I had to choose between flirting with Itachi and breathing. Another tough decision.

My brother and Shisui leaned over the side of the boat, gaping at us. I'd been afraid of this. Flirting with Itachi wouldn't be any fun if the other boys treated us like _this_. Well, it would still be _fun_, just not as much.

Obviously, I would have to have the _little dolphin_ talk with my brother, too. I wasn't so sure I could do this with Shisui—we didn't really _do_ heart-to-heart convos—but I'd have to make an exception if he continued staring at us like he would a dirty movie on Pay-Per-View. Growing up with boys, those were something I was all too familiar with.

_BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE E_—

Itachi and I started and turned toward the boat. Sasuke sat in the driver's seat, and appeared to have fallen asleep on the steering wheel—and the horn.

_EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE E_—

Aw, hell! I turned towards Itachi to try and rekindle the moment, but it was already too late. He'd taken his hands away from my stomach. The damned horn really ruined the mood.

_EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE _—

Itachi hauled himself up onto the boat platform and (_squee_!) helped me up behind him. My brother and Shisui both yelled at Sasuke.

—_EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!_

"Oh." Sasuke raised his head, looking as if he had no idea that he'd just been laying on the horn.

I was in the boat now with Itachi, and he was _still_ holding my hand. Or maybe _I _was clinging to _his_ hand...either way, it was irrelevant. I pulled him by the hand toward the bow of the boat. There was no such thing as _privacy _on a wakeboarding boat, but at least in the bow we had the windshield between us and the others.

As I turned to sit on the bench, I stuck my tongue out at Sasuke. He raised his eyebrow nonchalantly in response.

Itachi sat very close to me on the bench. He pretended to yawn and stretch and settled his arm across my shoulders. I looked over at him and smiled, at a loss for what to say. In all my years of being his next door neighbour and him being my secret crush, I'd never realized we had virtually nothing in common except wakeboarding. And, I figured wakeboarding _might_ be a touchy subject for him right now. Whatever, we didn't need to talk. We sat there in silence, his arm still across my shoulder, for the short ride back to the marina.

Instead of driving straight back to the wharf, where we usually parked the boat, Sasuke drove past the marina, so the boys could mock Mr. Uchiha, who hadn't moved from the position he'd been in before I splashed him, except he'd started on a new beer. The boys made fun of him, telling him he could enter a wet t-shirt contest with his figure, and so on. My brother looked at my dad, "Nice save, Pops."

"Hey," Dad tipped his beer to us. "You learn to be fast with Sakura around."

"I must say, young lady," Mr. Uchiha grumbled, "I was very impressed with the show you put on, up until the point I got doused. Until further notice, I want you to close the show at the Crappie Festival."

Which really meant, _Until you screw up_. But I didn't care. I'd been told I was better than the boys at something for the first time in my life! I turned to Itachi and gave him a smile so big it hurt my cheeks.

Itachi looked off into the distance, his face an expressionless mask. My brother and Shisui exchanged confused looks, instead of congratulating me. Only Sasuke would meet my eyes, and he slowly shook his head. _Not good_.

Oh, shit. _Crap_. Crappy! I'd upset the natural order! Only hours after Sasuke upset the order of things in team calisthenics. Oh, frick. I should have thought this through better.

Itachi began, "I didn't even—"

Mr. Uchiha interrupted him, "I saw what happened out there. You had your chance."

"Race you to the wharf," Sasuke called. Mr. Uchiha said something to my dad, set down his beer, and tried to vault himself up the stairs to the marina faster than Sasuke could idle the boat. The boys were idiots, and it was genetic. Sasuke let Mr. Uchiha win, touching the bow of the boat to the padded edge of the wharf just after Mr. Uchiha dashed past. The boys howled, and someone threw a couple dollar bills at Mr. Uchiha. He picked up the bills, and limped his way back down the stairs.

Once we got to the dock, Itachi jumped out to tie up the bow. He, my brother, and Shisui joked around with each other as they carried armfuls of the equipment back into the warehouse. None of them spared me a glance.

Sasuke cut the engine, "Now you've messed up."

"How?" I said, as I stepped out of the boat. "You think Itachi won't ask me out now that I've taken his place in the show?"

Sasuke just looked back at me evenly. That was _exactly _what he'd been thinking. I was beginning to get tired of all his warnings about Itachi. I grabbed my things, turned, and flounced away. Which was fairly ineffective in bare feet and on the concrete wharf.

"You'll see tonight at the party." Sasuke called after me.

"No, _you'll _see." I threw over my shoulder. Itachi and his pride would prove no match for me and Stage Three: Slinky Cleavage Revealing Top.

* * *

**End of Chapter 4.**

(1) For those of us who do their degrees in Celsius (like myself), ninety degrees in Fahrenheit is approximately thirty degrees Celsius, give or take.

Constructive criticism and reviews are greatly appreciated, as always.

Thanks for reading!

xx Bethany


	5. Putting On The Seductress Bonnet

**Disclaimer: If you recognize it, chances are I don't own it. **

Sorry for the long wait guys!

* * *

_Now we're finished, there's no way that we're ever gonna be okay_

_Don't wanna be a fake_

_How low can I go?_

_You might find me reading Cosmo_

_But when I'm finished,_

_You know that you're gonna wanna be with me, _

_Gonna wanna be with me, _

_Gonna wanna be with me_

Fake by Busted

* * *

As I was on my way home, walking along the seawall that prevented my lawn and the Uchiha's lawn from falling into the lake, my cellphone rang. I pulled it out of my bag without hurrying. There were only a few people who ever called me: my dad, my brother, assorted Uchiha's telling me when to come in to work (which included Itachi, but it wasn't as exciting as you would think, because he always sounded grumpy when he had to call me), Ino telling me when to come to tennis practice, and Shizune. I checked the caller ID and pressed the talk button. "Sup, Shiz?"

From the time Mom died up until I turned eleven, Shizune the au pair had hung out in the background of my life. She acted as a quasi-older sister/motherly figure, which I desperately needed, having grown up around so many boys. Especially since Mrs. Uchiha had no idea how to deal with girls.

"I'm on the dock," she said.

I peered the half-mile across the lake, and waved to her. I could barely make her out at that distance, against the trees that sheltered the Suzuki's house, the family she nannied for now. The only thing I could make out was her homemade patchwork dress, which was probably even visible from Mars.

"The children and I watched the last part of your wakeboarding run," she said. "You've improved so much since last summer!"

"Thanks!" I said, pleased that even Shizune, who knew nothing about wakeboarding, could tell that I had improved. "But I know that's not why you called. You're dying to know how it went with Itachi."

Shizune was in on my whole Life Makeover. Not on the fashion part, of course. I don't think wearing patchwork dresses and hippie clothing will help me to seduce Itachi. She hadn't even given me advice on what to do. I usually called once a week to tell her how my plan was shaping up, and she'd tell me that I was being ridiculous and that my plan would never work. I guess I just went to her to get some motherly input. In actual fact, Shizune and I had the perfect relationship. I could go to her for motherly input, and then do the opposite. The difference between me and girls with mothers was that I didn't get in trouble for it.

"Let me guess," she said, "When Itachi saw you in a bathing suit, he acted much cozier toward you, leading you to think that he would profess his undying devotion to you. Which he didn't. I'm right, aren't I?"

"Nope!" I then told her what had really happened.

"What?" She said when I told her about Sasuke beating Itachi in team calisthenics. "What?" She said when I told her I landed the air raley. "What?" She said when I told her about Itachi wiping out. When I got to the part about Itachi touching my stomach _repeatedly_ she interrupted me so often that I had to pitch a frustrated fit. I threw down the phone in the grass, cupped my hands around my mouth and hollered across the lake, "LET. ME. _FINISH_!" _Inish_, _inish_, _inish_, said my echo. I picked up the phone and told her the rest of the story, finishing with my plan to implement Stage Three that night.

"You don't honestly think that wearing a low-cut top to the boys' party will solve your problems do you?" She asked.

"Of course not. By wearing a low-cut top to the boys' party it will show Itachi that I'm ready for him."

"Sakura, no girl is _ever_ ready for a boy like Itachi. So, how were finals?" Clearly she wanted to change the subject, to impress upon me that teenage girls' lives didn't revolve solely around boys. Pfft. As if.

"Huh? Finals?"

"Yes, _finals_." She sighed. "You took them yesterday? To graduate from the tenth grade?"

Wow. It was hard to believe that not even twenty-seven hours ago I'd been flirting with the quadratic equation. Thinking back, it felt like I'd sleepwalked through the past nine months of school, compared with all the action I'd had today. Flirting with the quadratic equation was nothing in comparison to flirting with Itachi.

* * *

Mr. Uchiha let the boys throw a party at their house every Friday night during the summer. He reasoned that they were less likely to get into trouble at home than if they were elsewhere. And being their next-door neighbor, I'd obviously been to tons of their parties, so it should have been old hat. But not tonight! Tonight, I'd put on my seductress bonnet! Not actually, as that would have dented my hair, which I'd blown-out shiny, straight and bryozoa-free for the party.

We'd had a lot of rain in May, which made the lake full, the grass lush, the trees happy, and the ground soft. So walking through my yard into the boys' yard in my high heels was like wading through the deep sand in the lake, feet sinking with every step. I felt like Elizabeth Bennet in _Pride and Prejudice_ (tenth grade English) hiking through pastures to a house party, her petticoat six inches deep in mud. Oh darn, I seem to have forgotten my petticoat.

And oh ho, cheerio! Here was Mr. Darcy getting his groove on with Miss Bingley underneath a massive oak tree. Actually, it was only Sasuke and Hinata.

Sasuke pressed Hinata against the tree, kissing her deeply. I did a double take.

This really shouldn't have surprised me. They'd been going out for a month. Since he was my age, and she was a year younger, neither of them had their drivers licenses yet. But they'd still meet up, go to the movies, or go bowling or whatever. Heck, I'd even seen them kiss before, a quick peck. But I'd never seen them kiss like _this_.

Knowing Sasuke, I would have thought that his love life would be like every other part of his life: dangerous. It had started out that way. During middle school, Sasuke had followed in Itachi's footsteps by coming on to a different girl every week. The only difference was that Sasuke would get in a lot of fist fights with the girls' ex-boyfriends and occasionally I'd hear rumors about violent brawls and drive-by shootings that Sasuke would swear weren't true.

But now, he'd been with Hinata for a month. A whole month! It seemed stable. Even, dare I say it, _boring_. Very un-Sasuke like. But, maybe her own budding womanhood had brought out the pirate in him. Yaaarg.

Sasuke broke the kiss and turned to stare at me, like I had no right to watch what was going on in a public place. That's when I realized _I_ was staring at _them_. Standing still in the middle of the yard, gawking, as my heels settled into the ground. Watching him kiss Hinata bothered me, I just couldn't seem to put my finger on why. There was nothing left for me to do but to wade my way to the front porch of the Uchiha's house.

I rang the doorbell.

.

.

.

Nothing happened.

After a few minutes, I pressed my ear to the door and rang the doorbell again. I definitely heard the chime of the doorbell, along with the bass beat of the stereo and... laughter. Why was no one coming to the door? Maybe they had a closed-circuit camera on me right now, and everyone was watching me on the TV, taking bets on how long it would take me to give up and wade my way back home. I peered into the upper corners of the porch for a camera.

Why hadn't I just dispensed of the last three coats of my eye shadow and gone with my brother to the party when he told me he was leaving, like usual? My brother was an idiot, but he was totally comfortable in social situations, like Dad. Comfortable, or oblivious. They basically amounted to the same thing.

The door swung open, revealing my tennis team captain, Ino.

"Inoooooooooo!" I squealed, hugging her. This is what girls do.

"Sakuraaaaaaa!" She said in her loud, confident voice, playing along. "I figured I should probably answer the door, since it didn't seem like you were gonna come in by yourself. Why'd you ring the doorbell anyways? No one else is. They just walk in. Besides, don't you practically live here?"

Did I? Well, I supposed I knew the territory well enough, and I always hoped that someone noticed me. But this sounded less like I was a member of the family, and more like I was a stray dog. I changed the subject. "What are _you_ doing here? Are you friends with Itachi, Sasuke, or Shisui?"

She frowned at me. "I'm friends with _you_."

"Right!" I said. Was she? I fought the urge to look behind me, like she'd been talking to someone over my shoulder the whole time.

"You look great!" She exclaimed, pulling me through the doorway into the brighter light of the foyer. "Cute top and your eye shadow looks great!"

"Thanks!" I said, watching her closely to make sure I'd heard that last bit correctly. The music was loud, and _you look great_ wasn't something I heard every day. Scratch that, every _year_.

"You weren't planning to wear mascara? Usually when people wear shadow and liner that heavy, they wear mascara with it."

"I was! I have some, but I totally forgot to put it on! Thanks for reminding me!" I grabbed her hand. She flinched. I loosened my grip but didn't let go. "Will you come with me to make sure I put it on correctly? I'm totally serious."

Her eyes moved past me out the door, and towards my house. "You live next door, right?" Clearly, she didn't want to venture too far from the party with a wide-eyed lunatic such as myself.

"No, I live on a planet far, far away," I said sarcastically, "I parked my spaceship out back, come on." I pulled her along until she seemed to be keeping pace with me, and then I dropped her hand. I knew girls pulled each other by the hand and squealed a lot, but it was too weird for me to do it for extended periods of time.

Sasuke and Hinata were still kissing. They'd moved behind the tree, where I couldn't see them unless I was looking (which I was). I almost pointed them out to Ino, but then I thought better of it. I didn't want to sound like a fifth grader: _Wow_, _kissing_!

"You really do look cute," Ino said. "Except, what's with the makeover?"

I took a deep breath and readied myself for my next step into girldom: spilling a giggly secret. When we'd gotten far away enough from Sasuke and Hinata, I said, "I have a crush on someone, and I'm trying to get his attention."

"Itachi Uchiha?"

I stopped abruptly in my garage, and Ino, who wasn't prepared for the sudden stop, ran full force into me from behind. I shoved her and shrieked, "_What made you think that_?!"

"Oh, I dunno!" She yelled back, "Maybe the fact that you've told me_ about a million times_!"

I blinked, "I have?"

"Maybe not in so many words."

Oh _God_. "Have I been really obvious about it at school?" I failed to keep most of the horror out of my voice.

"Isn't everyone?" She said flipping her long blond hair over her shoulder with a tennis ace flick of the wrist that I would try later to reproduce (and fail). "Girls fall all over themselves around Itachi. He's hot, _and_ he's totally sweet."

"He sounds like fondue." Yummmmmm, _fondue_. I opened the door and led the way into my house.

I didn't think we were being particularly quiet. High heels may have looked dainty, but they didn't sound that way on a tile floor. Maybe it was just because my dad was so absorbed in his conversation on his cellphone. For whatever reason, when we emerged from the kitchen into the den, he started, and shoved the phone down into the cushions by his side. I was sorry I'd startled him, but it was really quite comical to see this big blond man jump three feet in the air when he saw two teenage girls. That is, it _would_ have been funny, if it wasn't so sad.

Dad was a ferocious lawyer in court. Out of court, he was one of those Big Man on Campus types who shook hands with everyone from the mayor to the alleged axe murderer. I could see a lot of similarities between my dad and Itachi. There were only two things Dad was afraid of. First, he lost it when anything in the house was misplaced. Needless to say, we had a lot of arguments about my room being a mess. But the arguments ended once I told him that it was _my_ room, and that if he didn't stop bothering me about it, I would go through his closet and re-arrange his meticulously color-coded wardrobe, and maybe even _hide_ some of his clothes (cue the horror movie music). No socks for you! Second, he was easily startled, and very pissed off afterwards. "Damn it, Sakura!" He hollered.

"Nice to see you too, loving father. Behold, I have brought my friend Ino home to witness our domestic bliss. She's on the tennis team with me." Actually, _I _was on the tennis team with _her_.

"Hello, Ino. It's nice to meet you." He said without getting up from the sofa, or shaking her hand or any of the other stuff he would normally do. While the two of them exchanged more polite snippets of conversation, I watched my dad. By the way he was sitting on the sofa, I could tell that he was protecting the phone behind the cushions.

I nodded toward the hiding place. "Hot date?"

I was totally kidding, by the way. I wasn't expecting the bright red flush that crept across his face, or the way he shifted uncomfortably.

Oh, ew. I _definitely_ didn't want to go there. Especially not when I was busy being self-absorbed.

"Never mind, forget I asked." I said quickly, wanting to change the topic as quickly as I could. I clapped my hands."Okay then! Ino and I are going upstairs, _very loudly_, and when we're done upstairs, we'll come back down ringing a cowbell. Please continue with your top secret phone convo."

I turned and headed for the stairs with Ino following along behind me. I thought Dad might call me back into the den, send Ino away, and give me one of his lectures about my attitude (_me? _Attitude? No way.) But obviously he was chatting with Angelina Jolie on the phone and couldn't _wait_ to get rid of me. Behind us, I heard him say, "I'm so sorry. Yes, I'm still here. Sakura came in. Ha! I'd like to see you try."

"Is he always this...jumpy?" Ino whispered.

"Always." I replied.

"Do you have a lot of explosions around your house or something?"

I glanced at my watch. "Not this early."

I passed through my bedroom, into my bathroom, and found the mascara in the drawer. Just as I was about to apply it to my eyelashes, I realized Ino hadn't followed me. I leaned through the bathroom doorway.

She stood in the middle of my bedroom, gazing around with wide eyes. Okay, so I hadn't made my bed. In three years. Big deal. And the walls were covered with wakeboarding posters and snowboarding posters and surfing posters (I wanted to learn how to snowboard and surf one day too.) I guess it all might have been overwhelming at first—definitely not something out of _Martha Stewart Living_.

"Is this Naruto's room?" She asked.

"What? No! Naruto's a neat freak. And he also collects Madame Alexander dolls."

She turned her wide eyes on me.

"I'm kidding! Just kidding!" I backtracked. Why, oh why did I have to say things like that? My family was already weird enough.

She stepped over to my bookshelf to peer at the stacks of wakeboarding magazines and sci-fi novels. Fine then, I didn't need her help anyways, the bi-yotch. I swiped the mascara across my lashes and popped back out of the bathroom. "Ready?"

She looked up at me guiltily like she'd been caught thumbing through my copies of _Playboy_ (stolen from Naruto and much more useful for learning what not to wear than teen fashion magazines.) But she hadn't found those yet. Standing by my bedside table, she held the picture of my mother.

She set down the photo and narrowed her eyes at me, "_You're _not ready." She led me into the bathroom and proceeded to explain to me that the look we were going for wasn't clumps of lashes honed to points like the tentacles of a starfish. Somehow in the purchase of my fine cosmetics, I'd missed out on an eyelash comb. She used a regular hair comb to tease my lashes apart.

We stomped back down the stairs (I couldn't find my cowbell, so I made air-raid siren noises to warn my dad) and waded across the yard. Sasuke and Hinata were _still_ making out, like they hadn't seen each other for years. Jeez, we'd only gotten out of school _yesterday_.

I tried to look without _really _looking, or letting on to Ino that I was looking. Both Sasuke's hands were on Hinata's shoulders, holding her in place while he kissed her. Both _her_ hands were under his shirt, on his stomach—his stomach hard with muscle, his smooth pale skin...I couldn't see it, of course, but I knew it was there.

It had never occurred to me before to be jealous of Hinata. But now I was burning with jealousy, sweating in the humid night. It must have been because I saw Hinata as an understudy for Anko or Hana, or all those girls who knew how to act and how to dress or, if they didn't, they hid it well. I could totally see a third grade girl feeling inferior to Hinata and wanting to be like Hinata when she grew up. That third grade girl was hoping that someday _she'd_ have a boyfriend like Sasuke, who loved her like Sasuke—

"Argh!" I bellowed as I pitched face-first onto the pine needles. My heel must have gotten caught in a snake hole.

"Are you okay?" Ino asked, putting a hand out to help me up. "Nice trick, by the way. You should add that to your wakeboarding routine."

"And steal Sasuke's thunder? No way!" I brushed myself off. I hoped I wouldn't need to go home and change. Being new to this whole "wardrobe" thing, my supply of Slinky Cleavage-Revealing Tops was sadly limited. Luckily, my denim skirt was made to look dirty. Very me. And the wild pattern of my shirt concealed any decayed-leaf stains. Satisfied with my appearance, I made my way along with Ino. I didn't look back to see if Sasuke had seen me fall. I hadn't forgotten that stare of his.

"Want to go out and play tennis tomorrow after it's cooled off a bit?" She asked.

"Sure!" I replied without thinking. Ino and I played tennis all the time during school, so why not outside of school, too? After I answered I realized that now, if Itachi were to ask me to go out tomorrow night, I wouldn't be able to go. Damn! "You shouldn't have to drive all the way down here to pick me up, and then drive me back."

"I don't mind." She said.

Stepping onto the Uchiha's front porch, I said, "I'll get Naruto to come pick me up after we're done." I wasn't worried about Naruto having plans. My brother had no social life. It ran in the family.

"Naruto?" She asked.

We walked back into the party. Fluttering my finely separated and mascara-ed eyelashes, I couldn't believe my luck. Usually when I went to parties, I entered alone, and someone took pity on me and talked to me. Then, I faded into the background. Or found the food table. Social butterfly, I was not. Tonight, I was entering _with _someone.

Of course, with my luck, the moment we hit the wall of crowd and sound, she pointed across the room and shouted, "Oh! I'd totally forgotten that Naruto was home from university! I'm gonna go and say hi!" The two people I felt the most comfortable with, hanging out with each other instead!

Except for the kids from out of town who were here vacationing on the lake with their parents, I knew everyone from school. For some reason, that didn't help matters but instead made things worse. I watched as Ino wove her way through the crowd and hugged Naruto. I debated following her. But then I thought that it might look like I didn't want her to leave me by myself, because I wasn't good with talking to people. The shame!

Suddenly things looked up. Way, _way_ up. I saw Itachi in the darkness, standing next to the stairs with his back to me. He stood a few inches taller than the crowd that surrounded him, which consisted of his friends who'd just graduated. Itachi was always surrounded.

As I crossed the room to make my way over to him, people kept stepping in my way, saying hi and trying to start conversations with me. Darn it! The one time I wasn't interested in being well-liked. I made nicey-nice with the party-goers, and just as I managed to weasel my way out of one conversation, someone else would step in my way.

My heart pounded by the time I reached him. It was now or never. I made myself grin as I slid my hand across his stomach, feeling his hard stomach underneath the cotton. I almost flinched at how good and intimate it felt, but through the marvel of my own willpower, I managed not to. I laid my head playfully against his chest, like I'd seen girls do to guys that they claimed to be 'just friends' with, but everybody whispered there was more going on.

Half of me expected him to yell, "Get off of me!" and shove me away. Not because Itachi would ever do this to a girl—he had much more charming ways of extricating himself from cretins—but my life had been one long string of embarrassments, and Itachi shouting out in alarm at my embrace would have fit in well. The other half of me expected Itachi to chuckle gently, but not make a move of him own, unsure how to act yet with this new me.

He didn't chuckle, nor did he shove me away. He did _exactly_ what he was supposed to do. He put his arm around my waist and drew me even closer against his warm body. I felt him nodding at something one of the guys was saying about baseball, but he didn't say anything to me or anyone else. As if a greeting like this from me was the most natural thing in the world. He smelled even better than usual, too, just a hint of cologne. A woodsy scent, with an undertone of fresh air and laundry detergent.

I snuggled against him, nose close to his warm, scented chest, and inhaled deeply, enjoying a few more seconds of this tingling paradise. If only my whole summer could be as heavenly as this—

His low voice vibrated through me as he asked his friends, "Have you been watching the Yankees? Derek Jeter, huh?"

Oh my _God. _I was hugging _Sasuke_!

* * *

**End of Chapter 5.**

Cliffhanger!

Reviews make me update faster... Jussayin.

xx Bethany


	6. Heaving Bosoms and Dastardly Deeds

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Nor do I own the plot. Period.**

* * *

_And I'll leave, leave it all behind,_

_if you'd be here, here with me tonight,_

_I'll be fine, I'll be fine, I'll be fine…_

Awakening by Mae

* * *

I jerked away from him. Almost instantly I realized that I shouldn't have jerked away. I should have pretended that I'd known it was Sasuke all along. Now it was even _more _embarrassing.

The damage was done. Worse, I didn't have a chance to burst out the front door and run—not walk, _run_—home, dash upstairs to my computer, and book a one way ticket to Antarctica to join a commune for teenagers too socially challenged for the chess club. Because, before I could take another step away, Sasuke caught me by the elbow.

"Later," he called over his shoulder to the guys. He pulled me into a corner and bent down to whisper in my ear. "You're blushing."

I opened my mouth. I didn't seem to be taking in enough oxygen through my nose. "It's warm in here." I said.

"You thought I was Itachi." The little dolphin was smirking, enjoying my discomfort too much for my taste.

"No, I didn't." I made an effort to slow my breathing through both my nose _and_ mouth. My bosom was heaving I tell you! I had a heaving bosom!

And Sasuke noticed. He focused on the V in the Slinky Cleavage-Revealing Top Meant For Another, and slowly, _slowly_ brought his onyx eyes up to meet mine. "You should have said something. I had no idea what was going on at first. But once I figured it out, I was _really_ enjoying myself."

"Shut up. I didn't think you were Itachi!"

"You did. Because I'm as big as him." His smirk widened—it was now bordering on a crooked grin—giving me a flash of his pearly white teeth.

There was no mistaking him for Itachi now that I was staring up at him. I tried to figure out what had led me to believe that Sasuke was Itachi, without checking his hair length and his face. It could have been his height compared to the boys two years older than him. But something else was different about Sasuke. He was more confident, more relaxed. More tingle-worthy, like Itachi had always been. The friendly prickles spread through my chest again, reminding me that Sasuke still held my elbow.

I reluctantly pulled out of his grip. "This isn't a laughing matter Sasuke. What if someone tells Hinata?"

"She won't care. She knows we're friends."

I didn't know about him, but for me, that hug hadn't felt like a hug shared between friends. It felt like a hug shared by two people who were teetering on the very edge of friendship, about to tumble down a waterfall into depths unknown. With rocks at the bottom. Sharp ones.

Or, maybe _I_ was the only one about to tumble. _He _still stood in his living room, at the edge of his crowded party like always, laughing down at me thinking, _The Slinky Cleavage-Revealing Top has cut off the blood supply to Sakura Haruno's brain_.

I reached up to his neck. Surprise finally flashed in his eyes—ha ha!—but he let me pull the skull-and-crossbones pendant on the leather string out from under his shirt.

"Make sure this shows at all times," I told him, "It's your cowbell. It lets me know when you're coming." I patted his chest, something I really shouldn't have done if we were just friends. As we've established, my brain wasn't functioning properly, and couldn't quite seem to be able to catch up to my body. Face still burning, I stepped away from Sasuke and into the crowd. Where would Itachi most likely be? Probably with Anko and Hana, pitting the best friends against each other to see what would happen. But no, Anko and Hana were at the edge of the crowd dancing together, but Itachi was nowhere in sight.

A sudden realization froze me in my place.

I walked back over to Sasuke, who was still watching me.

"What's wrong?" He asked.

"You're right," I breathed, my stomach sinking with every word. "Hinata won't mind us hugging."

"What do you mean?"

"She's in the side yard, making out with Itachi."

* * *

By the time I'd kicked off my heels and dashed after Sasuke outside, he'd already gotten himself pinned flat on his back under Itachi on the grass. I winced as Itachi shifted to get better leverage, and pressed his forearm harder across Sasuke's neck.

"Itachi!" I hollered, running all the way around them trying to find a way in. Most of the time I couldn't pull Itachi off Sasuke, and sometimes I even got hit myself. There was a time when I would have tried anyways, disregarding my own personal safety. This was back when we were all very little and made of rubber. Nowadays, hollering seemed to be more effective, unless they were really into it, in which case nothing would work.

They were _really_ into it. Sasuke managed to kick Itachi off of him and land a blow on Itachi's chin. They usually didn't hit each other in the face because Mrs. Uchiha would see the bruises and get angry. Tonight it seemed that Sasuke was too angry to care.

Itachi came right back with a punch to Sasuke's gut. While Sasuke was absorbing that one, Itachi pinned his arms behind him, tripped him, forced him to the ground, and pressed his knee into his back, pinning him to the ground. Tonight Itachi was more aggressive than usual, intent on causing more pain.

Wait a second. Something wasn't right here. Had they switched shirts? No, of course not. That made no sense, and Itachi _never _let Sasuke borrow his clothes. Slowly it dawned on me that I had had them confused, and that Itachi was Sasuke and Sasuke was Itachi. For the first time ever, Sasuke was kicking Itachi`s ass.

"Holy shit," I said helpfully. "Sasuke let him go."

Sasuke looked up at me, his dark eyes shadowed in the dark between the trees, skull and crossbones pendant swinging at his neck.

This gave Itachi the opportunity he needed to kick Sasuke off him. He slammed Sasuke to the ground and punched him.

"Itachi!" I said, stepping closer to them again. They weren't listening to me anymore. I looked over at Hinata, who had her hands over her mouth and her toes turned in. She looked exactly like a James Bond girl from the pre-Halle Berry era, one of those ditzes who stood safely in the corner and _never_ had a dagger when they need one. "Hinata, a little help here?" I called to her.

She stared back at me with big doe eyes, like she had no idea what I was talking about. Are you kidding me? She'd been with Sasuke for a _whole month_ and she'd never seen one of his fights with Itachi?

"Call Sasuke off!" I yelled at her. "Or Itachi! Whichever one you can get!" Which would be _both_ of them.

"Itachi, s-stop," she said in a whiny little voice that couldn't have reprimanded a Chihuahua.

"Forget it," I knelt down on the grass next to Itachi and Sasuke, and shouted directly at them, on their level. "Stop, or I'll go get your dad, and he'll come down here and curse at you and embarrass you in front of your friends!"

They didn't even slow down. Whoever was on top had the victim in a choke hold so real the victim's face was turning red.

"I'll go get your mom!"

Sasuke gave Itachi a final shake and jumped up quickly, so that Itachi couldn't grab his leg and bring him back down. "What is the _matter_ with you?" Sasuke screamed.

My question exactly. What was the _matter _with Itachi? He was making out with Hinata! This was horrible! It totally blew my theory out of the water that Itachi had never asked me out because I was younger than him. Hinata was a year younger than _me_!

Normally, I would have given up, skulked home, and broken open the Cheetos. I would have immersed myself in _Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ (for the millionth time) for comfort, and put it down after every paragraph to wallow in my own outrage and misery. He'd flirted with _me_ just that afternoon! He'd wiped bryozoa on _me_!

But this was no normal night. Tonight, I was on a mission. All wasn't lost. Maybe Itachi had flirted with me because he was overcome by my charms and wit (fu fu) but he just couldn't see me as the girlfriend type. Hinata didn't have this problem. Itachi had watched Hinata go out with Sasuke for a month.

Itachi stood up more slowly than Sasuke had, taking deep, ragged breaths, clearly in pain. I waited for Sasuke to turn his wrath away from Itachi and onto Hinata. I took sadistic pleasure imagining all the things he could call her, to save me the trouble. But he didn't give her so much as a passing glance. His attention remained focused on Itachi. "What the hell is the matter with you?" His voice broke.

Of course, _now_ Shisui and Naruto came jogging down the lawn, with Ino close behind them, and a crowd of curious party goers bringing up the rear. Even though the fight was over, Naruto stepped between Itachi and Sasuke. A smart move, considering these things had a tendency to flare up again, which was exactly what the ring of spectators was hoping for. Ino tried to catch my eye, but I shook my head.

Shisui took Sasuke's face in between his hands and peered at the big smudge underneath his eye. He turned to me and hissed, "Get rid of him in case Mom comes down."

I felt strangely honoured to be included, but why couldn't Shisui have asked me to get rid of Itachi instead?

That was okay, for now. Sasuke needed me. I put my hand on his back and said, "Walk away." We moved through the yard towards the side of the house, and away from the crowd. A pine needle hung from one of Sasuke's black spikes in the back.

After about fifteen paces, I felt his breathing almost return to normal. He started to turn around. "Don't look back," I said.

He took a deep, calming breath through his nose. He was fighting the part of the ADD that made him short-tempered and impulsive. The part that made him try to smash his big brother's face in.

"Try not to take it so seriously," I said in what I hoped was a soothing tone. This whole being soothing thing was kind of hard for me, as I was usually about as soothing as body lotion with skin conditioners and ground glass. But this was important. "It's probably a temporary thing. He's just mad at you for making the size jokes this afternoon—"

"I didn't start the size jokes!"

"You finished them, though. So he seduced your girlfriend. She accepted because you guys have been going out for a whole month, and things may have gotten into a rut." We made our way around the corner of the house, into the side yard, where no one lingering in the front yard could see us. I stopped him under the floodlight hanging from the eaves. "Let me see your eye," I reached up to cup his face like Shisui had.

"Is my mom going to notice?"

_Yes_, I thought. "I can't tell," I said. I didn't want him dashing after Itachi to get revenge. "Maybe we should clean it up."

He took off his T-shirt, wet the edge of it with the faucet attached to the house, and brought it to me.

"Sit down," I said. "I can hardly see you up there."

We sat down in the grass. I leaned close, tilted his face towards the light and began to wipe away the half-dried blood. He watched me with serious eyes.

And felt that tingle again. That same pesky tingle I'd felt when I'd hugged him in the living room, when I'd mistaken him for Itachi. Only now, I _knew_ he wasn't Itachi. Plus, I'd seen Sasuke without his shirt tons of times, including hours of no-shirt goodness that very afternoon. But the tingle remained.

It was only natural, I guessed. We were still pumped full of adrenaline from the fight, and mad about Itachi and Hinata, and jealous. I was leaning close to him, our lips only inches apart. He still smelled like cologne, plus something sexier.

"Well?" His voice cracked. He cleared his throat and said in his deep boy-voice, "Well?"

"Well, it's not coming off," I gave the oozing blood one last gentle swipe before sighing and sitting back on my heels. "I'm sorry about what happened."

He shrugged and kept giving me that intense, serious look. And the tingle stayed. It was almost as if he was sending me his adrenaline telepathically, and I could feel what he was feeling.

Which didn't make sense. He _should_ be feeling heartbroken about Hinata. But this felt _good_.

"The fireworks are starting without you." I stood up quickly and put out a hand to help him up (for show only of course— he was practically twice my size). He pulled his shirt back on. What a pity... With my hand still on his back, I steered him through the shadowy backyard towards the dock, and the muffled sounds of explosions.

Boys—mostly football players my age or a year older—lit bottle rockets and held them until the fuse sparked almost down to their fingers. At the last possible second, they threw them into the black lake. There was a pause. Then deep under the surface, the water glowed bright green for an instant. The lake said _foop_.

Sasuke would probably ask me to help him collect the bottle rocket sticks off the lake bottom tomorrow, as it was another one of his dad's rules. I didn't really want to, because I'd had an unpleasant bryozoa scare while doing it last summer. But I preferred the boys shooting the bottle rockets into the lake, rather than them shooting them towards my house, as it tended to give my dad a nervous breakdown. And I couldn't ask them to stop altogether. Sasuke got testy if he went more than a week without setting something on fire.

The boys shouted out greetings to Sasuke and shared their bottle rockets with him. He watched them with delight—well, as much delight as Sasuke can show—and barely a hint of evil. Then he handed me a bottle rocket and lit it for me with a lighter from his pocket. I finally managed to relax, standing on the dock with Sasuke, watching the lake glow brightly in the dark night. And we managed to forget about Itachi and Hinata.

.

.

.

For a little while.

* * *

**End of Chapter 6. **

Thanks for reading.

xx Bethany


	7. Seven Is Lucky

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Naruto characters, nor do I own the plot. They belong to their owners. (Kishimoto Masashi and Jennifer Echols respectively.)**

* * *

_Those two words are bullets in my chest, _

_'Just friends'_

**Just Friends by Jason Reeves**

* * *

During the school year, Anko and Hana had changed our official tennis team uniforms to micro-miniskirts. They claimed that it was to avoid the material bunching between our legs that occurred when wearing shorts, to allow us to play to our full potential. Personally, I'd never had the material bunching problem. I figured Anko and Hana had done this so that they would have the excuse to wear micro-miniskirts to class when we had a match after school. Thank god they had graduated this year and I was (mostly) rid of them. For me, fashion and tennis did not mix. I'm no Serena Williams.

Normally, I would have worn shorts and one of Sasuke's old t-shirts to play tennis with Ino. However, the tennis courts sat between the high school and the main road that led into town, which ran past most of the local teen hang-outs. If Itachi and Hinata were out on a date, they would have to drive by here. So, it was the micro-miniskirt for me.

"Is that outfit part of your makeover to seduce Itachi?" Ino asked as we changed ends of the court. We were the only two idiots out playing tennis on this ninety degree Saturday evening, so we had the courts to ourselves. The only sounds, besides the periodic whack of the rackets and the thumps of the tennis balls, were the sounds of cars passing by, and the buzz of the floodlights overhead. Still, it was hard to carry on a conversation across the court, so we'd taken to exchanging one or two sentences as we traded sides for the past hour.

We played two more rounds, each winning once respectively, then we exchanged sides again. "Yeah, I'll admit it's not much," I said. "I need a new plan, because it seems like Stage Three: Cleavage has no effect on cradle robbers. Any advice?"

I won one game, and then she beat me again. As Ino approached the net, she said, "I dunno, make him jealous? I'm not really the one to talk to about this stuff. I prefer the direct approach."

I dropped my racket on the ground with a clatter. "Don't look now"—which of course, was her cue to look—"But it looks like Stage Three worked after all! Itachi dumped Hinata, and the pink truck is coming for me!"

The pink truck was an enormous pickup truck that used to belong to the marina. It was so old that the red paint had faded to pink, and the Uchiha's Marina signs had peeled off both of the doors. Shisui had taken possession of the truck when he turned sixteen, and we'd given him hell about it. Then, when Shisui had gone off to university, his parents had bought him a new truck, and Itachi had inherited the pink monstrosity.

Of course, Itachi being Itachi had managed to make the pink truck seem cool. There were rumours circulating around school about Itachi's adventures in the pink truck. I'd had dreams about having my _own_ adventures in the pink truck. And now my dreams were about to come true!

Except in my dreams, I wasn't a dork. I whirled around to face Ino. "This is a disaster!" I groaned. "Itachi's come to pick me up! What do I do?"

"Well, first off, you need to calm down." Ino watched the pink truck as it pulled up outside the high chain-link fence. "Act interested, but not manic."

"I don't know how to do that! What should I do?"

"Well, first off, go hug him hello."

A breeze blew by my neck, reminding me of how hot the night was, and how much I'd exerted myself during our games. "But, I'm all _sweaty_!"

"If he really likes you, he won't mind." Ino said as she passed through the gate, heading toward Naruto's side of the truck to distract him for me.

As I got to the driver's side of the truck, the big heavy door opened, forcing me to walk around it so that I could hug— "_Sasuke?_"

Sasuke, seeing the look on my face, and the way I dropped my arms so quickly after seeing him, grumpily said, "Nice to see you too, Sakura."

I patted him lightly on the cheek— the cheek opposite the one that had the dark purple bruise under the eye. The pats grew harder and harder until I was practically slapping him. "I was hoping you were Itachi." I knew almost as soon as the words had left my mouth that Sasuke didn't deserve that. I stepped closer to him and wrapped my arms around him in a hug. "Oh, god, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean it."

He stiffened and didn't say anything. But, he slowly relaxed and wrapped his arms around my waist.

I stepped back marginally and looked up at him, "But, why are you driving Itachi's truck?"

"It's _my_ truck."

Itachi must have gotten a new truck for graduation, just like Shisui had, which meant that Sasuke had inherited the pink truck because—crap. "Sasuke!" I gasped. "I forgot about your sixteenth birthday!"

"I know."

That told me that Sasuke had already thought about everything that I was thinking about right now. Our birthdays were three weeks apart (1), we'd even had some birthday parties _together_ when we were little. I could not believe that I had forgotten his birthday. "I was so preoccupied with final exams, and the beginning of the summer, and—"

"Itachi. I know."

"I'm _so_ sorry. I'm such a horrible friend!" I said sincerely, hugging him as hard as I could.

I began to pull away but Sasuke's arms held me in place.

"I'm still mad." He mumbled.

I laughed and squeezed him again. I felt him bend down to rest his chin on the top of my head. Over on the other side of the truck, talking to Naruto, Ino raised an eyebrow at me.

The idea hit me so suddenly it froze me in my tracks.

I pulled back and grabbed Sasuke's hand.

"Let's go talk. _Privately_."

Sasuke stared down at our linked hands like he couldn't quite believe what was happening. Frankly, neither could I. "Okay." He told our hands.

I called across the hood of the truck to my brother and Ino, "We'll be right back."

Ino and Naruto stared at us, then at each other, then us again. I led Sasuke away, swinging his hand like holding hands with him wasn't the weirdest thing ever. We walked down the sidewalk, around the corner of the fence, to the side of the tennis courts that faced the road. We were just close enough to the tennis courts that the lights made us visible to the people passing by on the road: crucial to the plan.

I backed him up against the fence. I didn't actually push him or anything, but he must have felt trapped against the chain-link, because I was standing so close to him, and the determined expression on my face was so frightening.

I squeezed his hand. I was probably cutting of the circulation in his fingers by now. "I still think Itachi and Hinata's little fling is a fake. Itachi's trying to get revenge on you by stealing your girlfriend, and Hinata's trying to heat up your romance for the summer. In two weeks time, by the Crappy festival, Itachi and Hinata will be over, and things will be back to normal." _And Itachi will be free again_. "But you have to keep her interested. To make sure she comes back and never leaves you again. To teach her a _lesson_."

Sasuke began to breathe faster. His eyes widened as it finally dawned on him what I was trying to get at. In fact, he looked close to panic (at least, as close to panic as Sasuke could get). It was almost enough to make me back down. I would be really embarrassed if he ran away screaming and hitchhiked with some stranger just to get away from me. But, I had never gotten as close to Itachi as I had yesterday afternoon in the lake. That fact alone made me press on.

"You and I should pretend to hook up. That way, you can show Hinata that you're not putting up with her bullshit, and I can show Itachi that I'm girlfriend material. We'll drive them mad I tell you, mad!" I added that little joke on the end just in case Sasuke laughed at the idea of hooking up with me. If that happened, I could pretend I was joking all along, and salvage our friendship _and_ my pride. I knew Sasuke valued me as a friend, but I offered him a way out, just in case he was revolted at the idea of hooking up with me.

He swallowed, and eyed me cautiously. "You want to hook up with me, so that I can make Hinata jealous, and win her back?"

I nodded, wondering why this was so hard for him to comprehend. I guess boys don't watch as much _Laguna Beach_ as girls do.

"You think it would work?"

"Sure." It was looking like my theory about Sasuke being revolted at the idea of hooking up with me was right. "But, you don't have to do it with me if you don't think I'm the right girl for the job. I only suggested it because I'm trying to get Itachi, too." I guess he thought that hooking up with me would ruin his chances of hooking up with any girl ever again, as surely as if he'd gone out with Godzilla.

"Okay." He said quickly.

"I—huh?" I couldn't believe that he'd agreed just like that. I thought that it would be harder to convince him. I had the feeling that I was missing something, which, if I was being completely honest with myself, wasn't unusual.

"Okay, we'll pretend to hook up." He said, still watching me. He surveyed me, dragging his eyes from my face to my neck, down to my cleavage (thank you sports bra!), then he leaned back to check out my legs in the micro-miniskirt. He straightened up, as if he was satisfied with what he saw, and hooking up with me would do no damage to his reputation. I wasn't sure whether I should be flattered that I'd _passed_ or embarrassed at the way he eyed me.

His gaze made me uncomfortable, as it was causing that pesky tingle to return. Worse still, was that Sasuke seemed to sense that he was making me tingle. He made that face with the dropped jaw, the one he made when he was trying not to smile. Finally, it seemed that he had given up on not smiling because his face broke into a grin, that same grin he'd been wearing yesterday afternoon when he had beaten Itachi at push-ups.

A memory flashed in my mind of Sasuke, age 7, jumping off the roof of his house because Itachi had dared him to. (Broken ankle.)

Somehow, I was beginning to wonder what I'd gotten myself into.

Suddenly very nervous, I wrung my tingling hands and turned toward the road. "Should we drive into town, where more people will see us? We could pretend to k—" I looked back at Sasuke, and something in the way he was looking at me made me stop dead in my tracks.

"Iss?" He asked.

I nodded. "That way, chances are someone will see us, and it will get back to Itachi and Hinata."

Sasuke shook his head. "That's not a good idea. I'm a horrible actor, and something tells me you're not going to win an Oscar anytime soon either."

"Hey—"

He glanced down, and laced his hands with mine. "It needs to be natural. We have to act like we're into each other all the time, without checking first to make sure someone is watching." He brought his gaze up, and for a second, I could have sworn I felt his hands tremble in mine. "Maybe this is the first time we've realized we're into each other. Maybe this is our first kiss."

He leaned down, and when his face was within inches of mine, I giggled. Not the fake giggle of a tomboy, but a real, high-pitched, girly giggle that originated from somewhere in my chest that made me want to slap myself. Maybe there was hope for me yet.

"See?" He whispered, his breath fanning over my face, his lips almost touching mine. "This is what we want to avoid." And then he kissed me.

There was no embrace. Just his lips, soft and warm on mine. Our fingers interlaced.

A tingle so strong, it felt like a vibration, sparked through my body.

A hick driving by on the road, shouted, "Get a room, Uchiha! Woooo!"

Sasuke chuckled lightly against my lips, and I thought I detected a shudder, as if he could feel the tingle too. He pulled away and smirked down at me. "Is that what you wanted?"

"Yeah," I breathed. "Is that what _you_ wanted?"

His smirk faded. He turned to head back toward the pink truck. "Hn. Come on." We walked back up the sidewalk toward my brother and Ino who, although they were talking to each other, were watching us intently.

Once we'd gotten closer to the pink truck, Sasuke asked me. "Will you go out with me tomorrow night?"

"Yes," I smiled, focusing only on him, as if I had no idea that my brother was currently trying to stare a hole through my head.

"I'll pick you up at seven." Sasuke said. "No, wait."

I laughed. "Sure, you can drive one hundred feet and come pick me up at seven.

"I'll walk over at seven." He smirked. "Seven is lucky."

My brother cleared his throat.

"That's not what I meant!" Sasuke glared at Naruto, his cheeks tinted pink.

Ino intervened quickly, "Sakura, didn't you lose some tennis balls in the brush over there?"

Naruto, Sasuke and I all started toward the bushes along the side of the tennis court. Before I could get more than two steps away, Ino grabbed me by the back of the sports bra, snapping me backwards. "Anything you'd like to tell me?" She hissed.

"Yes!" I replied smugly. "But you have to make sure you keep it a secret. And not like the tennis team kept secrets last year." I'd seen Anko and Hana at work.

"Yeah, I won't tell anyone." She pulled out a tennis ball and started bouncing it on the pavement. She'd seen Anko and Hana at work, too. On _her_ secrets. Personally, I'd never had a secret for them to work on, I was just that popular.

"And don't mention this to Naruto either, because he'll probably end up telling Shisui, depending on how funny he finds it. You're the only one I'm telling, so if this gets out, I'll know it was you." I gave her a brief rundown of the plan. "Doesn't that sound ingenious? And slightly diabolical?"

"I think it sounds hopelessly complicated. Why don't you just hook up with Sasuke for real? He's adorable."

I eyed her, unsure if I should have told her what my plan was. I'll admit, Sasuke _was_ adorable. But I didn't plan to _act_ on his adorableness. And, I realized suddenly, I didn't want anyone else to act on it either. Now that Ino was pointing out flaws in my plan, I found that I didn't want to hear them.

Ino bounced the tennis ball methodically off the ground. "You think Itachi is adorable."

"Duh." I rolled my eyes.

"And Sasuke looks a lot like Itachi."

"True dat."

She raised an eyebrow at me. "So why don't you think Sasuke's adorable?"

I snatched the tennis ball out of midair and shook it at her. "Because he's Sasuke!"

Sasuke and Naruto were standing in the brush, oblivious to snakes, biffing tennis balls at each other as hard as they could, I turned to Ino. "You said that Itachi was like fondue."

"No, _you_ said that."

I waved my hand dismissively. "Whatever. You said that girls fall all over themselves to get to Itachi. They don't do that for Sasuke."

"Wouldn't that be better? You'd have to share Itachi, but Sasuke would be all yours."

I had thought that girls giggled secrets to each other because they understood one another. Ino didn't understand me at _all_.

Sasuke was now chasing after Naruto with a hangman's noose made out of vines. They were both laughing and carrying on like they were ten year-olds.

Sasuke really did look cute when he smiled.

Maybe Ino was half-right. I knew that Sasuke was joking about getting lucky with me, and that he was only playing the part so that he could win Hinata back. But deep down a teeny tiny part of me, about the size of a candy heart, wished that Sasuke really did dream about getting lucky with me.

* * *

**End of Chapter 7. **

(1) Yes, I'm very aware that in the actual Naruto series, Sakura and Sasuke's birthdays aren't three weeks apart, but for this story, that's how I'm gonna make it (there is a reason behind it, which you will find out in the later chapters.) It's **AU** for a reason, people.

**[Author's note:**

Well then, finally some SasuSaku moments. YAY! XD

Thanks for reading.

xx Bethany


	8. Friends, Lovers, and Angry Mothers

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Or the plot of this story. They belong to their respective owners (Masashi Kishimoto and Jennifer Echols).

* * *

********************************************VERY IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE ********************************************

STOP RIGHT THERE.

DO** NOT** KEEP SCROLLING.

YOU.

YES, I AM TALKING TO YOU.

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT.

HENCE ALL OF THE ASTERISKS.

PLEASE READ THIS

okay, I'll stop speaking in caps now.

So I know that it's been a while since I've updated this story, and for those of you who have been following this, I apologize. I won't bog you down with excuses because there are none. I am writing this to tell you all that **I HAVE CHANGED THE STORY**. I have made serious alterations to some of the earlier chapters, and I strongly recommend that you all go and read them before you progress any further. Otherwise things will not make sense, there will be mass confusion, I will get angry reviews and PMs, the world will stop turning on its axis and we will all die, etc., etc. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit on that last one. Anyway, please take the time and re-read those early chapters (most importantly Chapter 5) because it _really does matter to the story_. Thanks!

xx Bethany

Now, to finally get on to the story...

* * *

The Boys Next Door

Chapter 8

Friends, Lovers, and Angry Mothers

* * *

Itachi gazed down at me, his dark eyes contrasting harshly against the bright blue sky behind him - an eerie combination.

"Sakura," he shouted above the drone of the boat motor. "When we're old enough, I want you to be my girlfriend."

My heart leapt with joy. All of my hard work had paid off! Itachi had finally succumb to my womanly charms, the poor fool. I could already hear the wedding bells.

I opened my mouth to respond, and got a mouth full of hair. _Smooth_. I choked and gagged, trying to free the hair from my mouth. So much for my womanly charms.

"Define old enough," I said, spitting a piece of hair out of my mouth. "Because I'm older than Hinata, so if she's old enough, then so am I."

Itachi leaned toward me and whispered. "Great. I'll pick you up at seven."

I almost couldn't believe it. Itachi had just asked me out. I could already feel myself grinning like an idiot. Only, those were the words I had _heard_. What he'd mouthed was something completely different, kind of like one of those bad voice-overs they do in old kung fu movies. He'd been playing me the entire time, pretending to whisper sweet nothings into my ear…

My eyes snapped open.

"Asshole!" I yelled, jerking up in bed. Or at least that was what I _intended_ to do. However, I was so tangled up in my sweat-soaked sheets that I ended up pitching sideways over the side of my bed, head first. Before you can ask: yes. I really am this graceful all the time. I groaned and sat up, rubbing my head. Then I realized what I'd yelled.

"Whoops, sorry mom." I said sheepishly, looking at her picture on my bedside table.

I quickly shut off my alarm clock, which was blaring some chirpy pop song about love and hesitation.

Speaking of which, it was about time I got serious about this whole 'make Itachi my boy-toy' thing. I vowed to get a move on with my plan today at work. Unfortunately, as soon as I stepped in the marina office that morning, I was presented with a very large obstacle. Namely one seething Uchiha matriarch.

"Sakura!" She barked, whipping around in her office chair. "_What_ are you doing?"

I froze, one foot in mid-air.

"Uh, going to work?" I asked, faking confusion.

She narrowed her eyes at me, clearly seeing through my farce.

"You and I both know that is not what I meant." She stood and strode toward me. "It was bad enough when I found out yesterday that Itachi stole Sasuke's girlfriend. Sasuke wanted me to _ground_ him."

I took a step back as she loomed over me. If she grounded Itachi, that would mean that he wouldn't be able to go and hang out with Hinata, which was good news. Instant break-up! However, if she grounded him for the whole summer, that would also mean that he and I wouldn't be able to get together. Not good. "Did you?"

Were she not too dignified for such an action, I'm fairly certain Mrs. Uchiha would have been grinding her teeth in aggravation at this point. "I can't _ground _my adult son for stealing the other's girlfriend!"

She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "But clearly I have to do something. Sasuke's eye is black and Itachi is holding his jaw at a funny angle, and he won't even let me look at it. The two of them can't even be in the same room together without a fight breaking out! It was bad enough when the two of them were only torturing each other physically, but now it's mental too?"

Where had she been for the last 15 years? For as long as I could remember, Itachi and the other boys had been tormenting Sasuke about his ADD. Clearly Itachi made sure not to do it when their mother was around. Somehow though, I didn't feel like pointing this out would help my cause, so I chose to remain silent and nod my head sympathetically. "Do I have gas?"

She folded her arms and glared at me, not going along with my attempt to change the subject. "And to make matters worse, I find out this morning that now you and _Sasuke_ are going out?"

I swept my hand over my body in the 'all this can be yours' gesture. "Don't say I didn't warn you," I sing-songed.

"You. Were. After. _Itachi_." She ground out, emphasising every word.

I blinked innocently. "Who, me?" Okay, so maybe Sasuke was right. I wasn't about to win an Oscar for that performance. Whatever. "I was after Sasuke."

Mrs. Uchiha rolled her eyes. "You took an extra 30 minutes of lunch yesterday, to stare longingly out the window and wait for Itachi."

I raised my chin haughtily. "You people are slave drivers. Can't a girl get a break to watch What Not to Wear?"

"Besides," she said more calmly, examining me a little too close for comfort, "if you and Sasuke were really about to get together, Sasuke wouldn't have come to me yesterday and complained about Itachi stealing his girlfriend. He would be happy to have you and he'd forget all about her."

Okay, this was a valid point. Speaking of Sasuke, now would be a great time for him to walk into the marina office and divert some of the maternal wrath onto himself. I looked around futilely. Damn it. I decided to give part of the truth. "It's the principle of the thing. Sasuke's still mad at Itachi for breaking his remote control truck when we were 8."

She went limp with exasperation. "_Sasuke_ broke that! Itachi told me that Sasuke broke it. And Sasuke told me that Itachi broke it. I believed Itachi."

"Exactly."

She stared at me hard, waiting for me to crack. I resisted the urge to shift uncomfortably. Finally she nodded at the door and said, "You're in the warehouse. With Itachi."

A fate worse than death, I can assure you. Things were falling into place better than I could have expected. Today would be the perfect opportunity for me to move things along with Itachi. We would have plenty enough time to talk and flirt in the warehouse, considering all that we really had to do was help the full-timers take boats out of storage. Then we would clean them off, top off the fluids, and hand them over to Shisui and my brother for them to deliver across the lake. Sasuke had gas. I think more than putting me with Itachi out of spite, Mrs. Uchiha was just trying to keep Itachi and Sasuke as far from each other as possible.

But, despite my best efforts to move things along with Itachi, he was the same as always (apart from two days ago in the boat). He was perfectly nice, and sometimes he would do things that were really sweet, like pick me up a drink from the office when he went to get one for himself. But that was it. He spoke to me the exact same way he spoke to elderly customers. And his mother. Goddamn it. Maybe he didn't know that Sasuke and I were going out yet. I can't imagine Mrs. Uchiha sharing this tidbit of information with him, especially if she thought it would just add fuel to the fire. Meaning that Itachi had no idea yet that I was perfectly fine, date-able material. And as skilled as I was in the womanly arts (namely of manipulation and seduction), I had no idea how to pass this information along to him other than telling him outright, which would totally blow my cover. So I was perfectly sweet right back to him, and generally just pranced around the warehouse in my tank top, acting like I didn't have a care in the world.

Later in the afternoon we went wakeboarding. We'd skipped calisthenics yesterday, and no one seemed to be in the mood for them today either. Neither Naruto nor Shisui brought it up, and Sasuke and Itachi were too busy glaring and pitching life vests at each other to notice much else. Understandably, we were all a bit on edge by the time we set off. But Itachi spotted first, and Sasuke sat way up in the bow, so we all began to relax marginally. Plus, it wasn't very likely that Itachi and Sasuke would get into it on the boat anyway. Shisui and my brother could easily forestall any potential fist fights– Naruto was bigger than all of them.

As for me, I wanted so badly to sit in the aisle across from Itachi, but I knew it would be moot point. Itachi was too concerned about messing up his 'relationship' with Hinata to fool around. Especially while it was having the desired effect on Sasuke. So, instead of giving into temptation, I walked right by the aisle seat and hunkered down in the bow with Sasuke. Unfortunately Itachi was looking the other way, so he didn't even _see_ the knee-weakening look that Sasuke gave me as I sat down. But Shisui, who was driving, definitely did. Hopefully he would be kind enough to relay that information to Itachi when the time was right. I wondered what Sasuke would want to do with me. He and I both knew that it was a bit early in our faux couplehood for PDA. It would look suspect if after almost sixteen years of friendship, Sasuke and I just suddenly started making out in the boat with my brother and his brothers watching. Ew. Sasuke seemed to be thinking along the same lines as me, because he made no effort to initiate contact of any kind. He seemed to be content to watch me darkly from across the bow. I shifted uncomfortably, unused to receiving that kind of look from Sasuke. Maybe we weren't thinking the same thing after all.

However, that was not my biggest problem at the moment. Sasuke had told me yesterday that Itachi would have no interest in asking me out now that I had taken his place in the wakeboarding show. And as much as I didn't want to believe that Itachi was that petty, I had to admit that Sasuke had a point. Which lead to my present dilemma. Maybe I should purposefully bust ass in front of Mr. Uchiha, and lose my spot in the wakeboarding show to appease Itachi's ego. But you know what? I had another run so fantastic that I decided I didn't want to screw it all up just to please a boy. Even a boy this important. In fact, my last few runs had been so great that I decided that the next time we went out, I was going to attempt an S-bend. This would mean actually _landing _the S-bend, unlike some adrenaline junkies I knew. Unfortunately, Itachi had another awful run, as did Sasuke – ouch. And Itachi didn't even seem to mind that I had another great run and he didn't. He was the same as always, polite and a bit too distant for my tastes. He must have really been enjoying the fact that he got Sasuke's goat. Er, girlfriend. Whatever, it didn't matter. I would get Itachi in the end.

I was feeling hopeful about my situation when we docked at the marina later that afternoon. I was in such a good mood that when Sasuke helped me out of the boat and we did our secret handshake, I didn't even care that Itachi wasn't around to watch. It felt nice that someone valued me enough to want to do a secret handshake with me.

"By the way," I asked, mid-high five. "What was with that look you were giving me in the boat?"

Sasuke had the decency to look embarrassed. "What look?"

"This one," I said, giving him my best demonstration.

He furrowed his brow. "I'm not a doctor, but it looks to be a case of mild constipation. Or possibly a stroke."

I shoved him, and he laughed, touching his elbow to mine in the final stage of the secret handshake. We parted ways on the wharf and I began to make my way to my house, taking big sniffs of the warm evening air, enjoying the scent of cut grass and flowers. I didn't even mind when I had to stop for a few minutes and blow a gnat out of my nose. I really wished that it had been Itachi who had asked me out tonight, but if I had to go on a fake date with anyone, I was glad that it was Sasuke.

After having dinner with my dad and Naruto, I treated myself to a deluxe beauty routine, which included exfoliating, shaving, plucking, and moisturizing every square inch of my body. Then I moved on to the hair and makeup, finishing up my look by teasing my mascara-coated lashes with the comb extension on my brother's razor. Men really have no idea how easy then have it.

Even with all of that, I was still ready in plenty of time. I had an hour to kill before Sasuke would be coming over to pick me up. I peered out my bedroom window, looking in the direction of Sasuke's house, wondering what he was up to at this very moment. Was he getting ready too? Maybe he was in the shower. The water cascading down through his soft, dark hair, down his sculpted shoulders and chest, to his abdomen and then–

I took a step back from the window at the force of the picture and the realism, even though the image of him in the shower was entirely in my imagination. Surely I must be picturing _Itachi_ in the shower. I didn't have these kinds of thoughts about _Sasuke_. Plus, the boy in the shower wasn't wearing a skull and crossbones. Sasuke wore that thing everywhere – even while wakeboarding and swimming. I felt it was only right to assume that he wore it in the shower too. Although in all the times we'd worked together at the marina, I'd never noticed a dirty patch in the shape of a skull and crossbones on his chest. Okay, enough about Sasuke's naked chest. I seriously didn't think I could stand another minute of torturing myself like this.

So I did the only thing I could do.

I grabbed my phone and punched in a number.

It only took three rings for the person on the other end to answer.

"Hello?" Shizune answered, her voice polite. Clearly this woman didn't have caller-ID. Although, this was probably better for my purposes; I don't think she would answer half of the time if she knew that it was me.

"Well, this time I've done something that definitely isn't covered in the child-care manual. Go ahead. Ask me what happened. Ask me where I'm going right now. You're going to love it."

She sighed, before asking wearily. "Do I really want to know?"

I explained what had happened at the party with Itachi and Sasuke, and how I was about to leave for my first fake-date with my best friend turned lovah. As I got to the end of my story, I could hear the sound of deep, meditative breaths and knew that Shizune was practicing her relaxation techniques. She was taking this better than I had expected.

After a few minutes of silence, I took a deep breath and yelled into the receiver, "WELL?"

I didn't have to see her to know that she had probably just jumped a foot into the air. "Doesn't this sound like a supreme girl adventure? My life is like Gossip Girl. Only slightly less bitchy and more glamorous."

"There's something going on with those boys," Shizune said, completely ignoring my previous statement. Clearly she wasn't up-to-date with the latest teenage fads and trends. Actually, that wasn't really surprising. Knowing Shizune, she was probably _never_ up-to-date with the trends, even when she herself was a teenager.

"Like what?" I asked.

"I'm not sure. It's been years since I've given Itachi or Naruto or Sasuke the evil eye… _WE DO NOT EAT THE SAND!_"

I winced as Shizune's voice reverberated through the speaker, before growing fainter. Obviously one of Shizune's new charges had broken the first cardinal rule: we do not eat anything that has not been directly placed in front of us for consumption. Growing up with four boys, that was a rule that I grew to understand and appreciate at a very early age.

Finally, after a pause, she returned to the phone. "Yes, as I was saying, I really have a hard time believing yours is the only plot at work here."

I rolled my eyes. "Uh, hello? Of course it's not! Itachi has been the one plotting from the very beginning. He stole Hinata from Sasuke as revenge. Itachi has _always_ been the instigator of the plot, even from when we were kids."

Shizune hummed thoughtfully. "I don't know about that. After all, it was Sasuke who put the firecrackers in my homemade cheese."

"OH MY GOD I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THE HOMEMADE CHEESE." I laughed until I choked.

"I always loved Sasuke though," Shizune continued.

"Wait, what?" I stopped laughing abruptly. Where the hell was this coming from? Shizune wasn't the type to freely profess her love of anything.

"But Sasuke had room to grow. And it sounds to me like he still does."

Feeling strangely defensive of Sasuke all of a sudden, I said, "_Everybody_ has room to grow."

"And don't let yourself be his field." Seriously, where did this woman come up with her analogies?

"What am I, a crop of rutabagas?"

"Do you understand what I'm saying?" Shizune ground out. I could tell that she was probably trying to resist losing her temper with me on the phone because there were children around her.

"Not particularly," I said. "Are you trying to forbid me from seeing Sasuke?" How romantic. _I forbid you from seeing the boy next door!_ I'm sure that would work out well.

Shizune sighed. "Sakura, I'm not trying to forbid you from doing anything. You and I both know that I have no authority over you. I'm not your caregiver anymore. I am merely saying this because I'm concerned. I don't want you to get involved in something that might end up hurting you in the end. Just… watch out around those boys."

I hung up the phone and stared at the receiver.

Why did Shizune have to be so serious and cryptic all of the time? I knew what I was doing. I just had to go above and beyond conventional means if it meant that I would be with Itachi in the end. I wasn't going to hurt myself. I think I would end up more hurt in the end if I had to watch Itachi be happy with some other girl and know that I never even tried to make my feelings known. And if I could help Sasuke win Hinata back in the process, that was even better.

Before I had the chance to think on the subject any further, my thoughts were interrupted by the chime of the doorbell.

Oh c_rap._

Sasuke was here!

* * *

End of Chapter 8


	9. Knee-Deep In Romance

Disclaimer: I own nothing in this story.

* * *

The Boys Next Door

Chapter 9

Knee-Deep In Romance

* * *

By the time I got downstairs, Sasuke was already standing in the foyer talking to my father. I didn't even pause as I reached the bottom of the stairs. I grabbed Sasuke's hand and bolted out the door, hollering a quick "Bye, Dad!" over my shoulder. I had no idea what my father and Sasuke had been talking about, but I knew that it was best not to linger, for fear of my father's reaction should he find out about Sasuke and I. If my father had it his way, I'm fairly certain I wouldn't be allowed to date until I was at least 35. Or married.

Sasuke and I walked to his truck in silence, the only sound being that of the gravel crunching beneath our feet.

Well, this was awkward. I began to wrack my mind for something to say to fill up the uncomfortable silence between us.

"Hey, did you know that –" I began.

"Why didn't you tell your dad about us?" Sasuke asked, abruptly. I gapped at him. He refused to meet my eyes, choosing instead to gaze off at some point far in the distance. If I didn't know any better, I would think that Sasuke sounded almost hurt.

I stopped walking.

"What are you talking about?"

Now he looked at me, his expression set in a scowl. "Why didn't you tell your dad that we were going out? I told my mother."

"Yeah," I said. "Thanks for that, by the way! She intercepted me in the office this morning and gave me the third degree about it."

Sasuke scoffed, "Yeah, when I told him I was here to pick you up for our date, he almost slammed the door in my face. _After_ he threatened to have me arrested. Your dad said he thinks I'm trying to steal your virginity."

I tittered uncomfortably at the thought of my dad and Sasuke having any type of discussion about such matters. There are some things that should just never, ever happen.

"Shizune does too, apparently."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow in question.

"I was talking to her on the phone earlier," I clarified. Suddenly a thought occurred to me. "Wait, are _you _a virgin?"

Sasuke stared down at me disapprovingly. Then he turned his disapproving stare off into the distance above my head.

"You aren't," I sighed. I hadn't even realized that I was holding my breath.

"N–," he started. "W– Ugh." He put both his hands in his hair, which only served to demonstrate how strong and well-formed his biceps were. "I am, okay? But you don't know that. And neither do my brothers. As far as they know, I've been doing the entire cheerleading squad since I was fourteen."

Okay, so they didn't have sex. That was a relief. And yet, why was I still picturing Sasuke's biceps straining as he braced himself over… who?

"And now your dad is thinking the same thing." Sasuke continued.

"About your biceps?" I laughed.

Then I slowly and _oh-so-painfully _realized that no one had made a joke out load about Sasuke's biceps.

Now would be as good a time as any for the earth to open up and swallow me whole.

Sasuke cleared his throat uncomfortably as I desperately tried to avoid looking in his direction. He suddenly became very focused on his pockets, rummaging in them intently until he produced a packet of gum. He popped a piece in his mouth and thrust the packet in my general direction, all without looking at me. I took a piece, glad for anything that I could shove in my mouth that would prevent me from talking.

We walked on in silence until we reached Sasuke's driveway and the pink truck. I hopped up (literally, seeing as how the seats were level with my head) into the truck as Sasuke got in on the driver's side. I still found it weird that Sasuke was sitting in the driver's seat. I was used to sitting in the back with him while one of the older boys drove us around.

Itachi's new truck was gone, which meant that he was already on his way to pick up Hinata. We'd probably run into them at the movies, either in the theatre or in the parking lot. Our biggest problems right now would probably have to be deciding on where exactly to sit in the movie theatre and whether or not we were going to awkwardly attempt to make out like all the rest of the couples. I wasn't too worried about it right now though – we would cross that bridge when we came to it. For now, we were taking a detour by the dirt track, probably so that Sasuke could show off to some of his friends the new (to him) pink truck and the prize of a hot girl inside! Okay, so probably not the last one. However, instead of parking in the parking lot like I thought we would, Sasuke continued on to the mud field, which was basically just a huge pit of mud that the owners of the property had lovingly sculpted into valleys and bumps and watered daily, to maintain its muddy consistency. The local boys loved to take their pick-up trucks and splash through the mud. But this was not something that was done with their girlfriends. Most girls wouldn't stand for it. It was not date appropriate.

And yet, here we were lined up at the edge of the mud field, listening to Kiba Inuzuka blasting some awful rock music from his jacked up F-150 behind us. There was no backing out now.

'Is this our date?" I ventured.

"Aa," Sasuke nodded.

I had been lead to believe (through teen fashion magazines and romantic comedies) that on most first dates, guys took girls to the movies. Sometimes they even went to dinner first. But not me. Instead of taking me to the movies like any normal boy would, my blockhead best friend decided to take me _mud riding_. Typical.

"Right, so correct me if I'm wrong here, but the whole purpose behind this 'dating' thing is to make Itachi and Hinata jealous, yes? How pray tell are we going to do this if they're not even around to see us together?" Mr. Uchiha used to take the boys – and by association me – to the dirt track to watch races when we were younger. That was all well and good. But nobody ever came here for _dates_. This was definitely not how I imagined my first date would be. Then again, I had always thought that my first date would be with Itachi, so really nothing was going according to plan. "Didn't Itachi take Hinata to the movies?"

"We want to make them jealous," he agreed. "But we can't follow them around. That would be a dead giveaway."

He had a point, but I wasn't willing to let it go just yet. "But still, _mud riding_? Do you do this with every girl, or am I a special exception?"

Sasuke stared straight ahead, his expression a blank mask. He was sulking. Then I thought about all of the times I'd gone over to the Uchihas' to watch movies. Sasuke would get up after the first thirty minutes, asking us to call him back in for the good parts. Then we would constantly be telling him to quiet down as he played his drums, then made milkshakes, or blasted music from his CD player. "You can't sit through a whole movie, can you?"

He frowned, which made cute little lines appear between his brows. He fished a lighter out of his pocket and flicked it, studying the flame.

Either he couldn't sit through an entire movie, or he didn't want to be around Itachi and Hinata because it hurt too much to see them when they were together. I could understand that, seeing as how it had only been two days since the freaking shock of seeing his big brother and his hoe-bag girlfriend making out at the party. Poor Sasuke. His heart must be breaking every time I made him talk about Itachi and Hinata (which was admittedly a lot. I am a terrible friend). I needed to give him time for the wound to scab over.

"We don't need to go to the movies," I relented, "but we do need to go somewhere that girls will see us. Otherwise Itachi and Hinata will never hear about us going out. Boys don't gossip."

Sasuke looked at me seriously. "You don't know us as well as you think."

This was a disturbing concept.

He stuffed the lighter back in his pocket. "What if we actually enjoyed hooking up?"

I blinked owlishly. "Um, what?"

"What if we made it productive?"

I nodded emphatically. "Yes, now you're talking! Producing envy and anger, preferably without any water works."

"Forget about that, Sakura. It'll come without us trying so hard." He dug around in his pockets, withdrawing a box of fishhooks and rattling it. Seriously how much shit did this guy have in his pockets? "You're turning sixteen in less than two weeks."

I winced. "Okay, you don't need to rub it in that I forgot your birthday. I already apologized, what more do you want from me?"

He waved me off. "Didn't your dad stop teaching you how to drive after you backed his car into the woodpile?"

"Yes, but that was only partially my fault! He told me to back left, and I thought I was but again, you _really_ don't have to rub it in–"

"I can teach you how to drive."

Wait, what? This boy must really have a death wish. "Around town?"

"Hell no. I'm not an idiot." Sasuke scoffed. "I'll teach you right here. It's much safer."

I stared out at the mud field and pondered my options. "I might ruin your truck."

"Who could tell?"

"What if I hit someone?"

"If they're one of the idiots here mud riding, chances are they'd probably enjoy it."

As if in agreement, Kiba started honking along to the music blasting out of his stereo.

"Ah, what the hell." I said, spitting my gum out the window and starting to slide over to the driver's seat. Sasuke crawled over me and nose close to his chest, I caught a whiff of his cologne. Mmm. All too soon he was on his side of the truck, and I was sitting in the driver's seat. "Is it in first gear?" he asked. "Are your feet on the brake and the clutch?"

I nodded.

"Look both ways to check for traffic before proceeding carefully into the mud hole."

I screamed as I felt the earth fall away beneath us. Then I bit my scream off as we bounced over a little hill that sent us flying. Now I was giggling.

Sasuke grinned, fastening his seatbelt. He did an amazing imitation of the calming announcer voice from the films we watch in driver's ed as he instructed me on how to get out of the mud hole.

Later, as we waited in line for our seventh run through the mud pit, Sasuke spoke up. "You drive fine."

"Really?" I squealed, delighted.

"Aa, but I haven't told you to turn left or right yet."

I deflated. I thought I had been doing rather well but that's because Sasuke hadn't asked me to do anything hard. Like tell my left from my right.

"It won't really matter when you're driving on your own," Sasuke reasoned. "No one is going to be sitting in the passenger seat telling you to turn right or left. The only time anyone will be doing that is when you take your driver's test."

"That's also the only time anyone taking their first road test can be banned from driving for life." I edged the pink truck forward as another pick-up dropped into the pit in front of us.

"Hold your hands like this on the steering wheel." He placed his hands on the dashboard with his first fingers and his thumbs up, pointing to each other. "L is for left."

"Won't the instructor notice?"

"Not if you hold your hands like that during the inspection," he said. "By the time you start the instructor will just think you have arthritis or something and that it's none of her business."

I looked over at him. "You're a lot sneakier than I thought you were."

He smirked. "Perks of having ADD: you learn how to cheat."

"Shizune still hasn't forgiven you for exploding her homemade cheese."

Sasuke laughter rang out just as we plunged into the pit. It gave me a huge boost of confidence. I veered off the well beaten path into the uncharted territory of bigger, better mud puddles. I kicked up splashes so high that Sasuke asked me to put my window up to salvage what was left of the truck's interior. We bounced around from corner to corner, and were on our way back when the truck sank lower than I anticipated, sending a huge wave of mud over the hood and up the windshield. I pressed the gas and heard a ripping sound.

I turned to Sasuke in horror. "Oh my god, I broke your truck."

"We're just stuck. It happens." He unfastened his seat belt. "Switch back."

I started to crawl over him. I figured since he had crawled over last time, it was my turn this time. Clearly we weren't thinking along the same lines, because we met in the middle, both trying to crawl over. I moved to my right and he to his left and we met again, laughing. Finally, he asked, "Do you want to be on top or bottom?"

"Either's fine." I heard myself saying. I had to remind myself that this was Sasuke, not Itachi. This was the baby of the Uchiha family, who up until a few days ago I had always thought of as being the littlest. You do not make sexual jokes with babies.

He picked me up and before I could wiggle or protest, removed me to the passenger seat. He slid into the driver's seat and pressed the gas, harder than I'd pressed it. There was another awful ripping sound, and the truck didn't move. Sasuke opened the door and jumped out, sinking down much lower than he would have on solid ground. He gestured for me to slide over. "They'll probably call someone to pull us out, but it might take a while. We can wait by the concession stand."

Sasuke and I both looked down at my feet, which were clothed in cloth slip-ons. My poor little shoes. They would never be the same after this. I sighed and kicked my shoes off, sliding over, only to see Sasuke waiting by the open door, his back to me, waiting for me to get on. When I didn't get on immediately, he looked over his shoulder as if to say, _what are you waiting for_? I hadn't been on a boy's back since middle school, and back then I was so worried that I would crush the boy who was carrying me (understandably so, seeing as how the boys were all so _tiny_) that I couldn't even enjoy it. But it wasn't this way with Sasuke. I felt like a dainty, weightless snowflake when I slid onto his strong, solid back. A snowflake in the middle of a mud field. Sasuke nudged the door closed with a hip, and looked down at his feet. Or rather, where his feet _should _have been. They had completely disappeared in the mud. "Sasuke, what about _your _shoes? Your mother is going to kill you."

"They're Itachi's." I could hear the smirk in his voice. "I'm going to put them back in his closet just like this."

I felt a momentary pang for Itachi, then I almost burst out laughing imagining the look on his face when he found his shoes. If there was one thing that could make me dislike Itachi, it was how much he cared about his clothing. I cared about my own wardrobe only through great effort. Itachi's shoes made a _schlep_ sound every time Sasuke took a step. He struggled getting up the hill to the lip of the mud hole, and I thought I would have to get down after all.

Sasuke felt me start to slide down, "No!" he said, holding my legs more tightly. "We're fine." With one last _schlep _we made it to the top. Waiting at the top was a tiny trailer, blowing smoke out of an exhaust fan. The air smelled like fried food. "Are you hungry?" Sasuke asked.

"Not particularly, but that's never stopped me before."

He stepped up to the window. "What do you have?"

The clerk/cook/janitor/whatever looked up from a tiny TV in the corner. "French fries, homemade doughnuts."

Sasuke inclined his head toward me (as much as he could, seeing as how I was on his back) which let me know that I was the one who had the honour of choosing between this array of delicacies.

"Strangely, I have a taste for French fries."

Sasuke placed the order, and reached in his pocket for his wallet. It would have been much easier if he had just set me down on the bench next to the concession stand. But I was beginning to understand that Sasuke didn't want to put me down because he enjoyed having me on his back. Holding my shoes with one hand, I grabbed the fries. Sasuke held the soda.

Sasuke walked to the bench and set me and the soda down. I was still holding the fries and my shoes (which I threw to the ground. So much for caring about my clothes). I picked up the soda so that Sasuke could also sit down, then handed it to him. This whole situation felt like one of those questions on standardized tests at school:

_If Itachi hooks up with everyone in school on Wednesday and Hinata on Friday, and Sasuke hooks up with Hinata on Thursday and Sakura on Sunday, on what day does the nuclear war commence? _

Sasuke crossed his legs, as if he wasn't covered up to the knee in mud. He took a drink of the soda, offered it to me, and grabbed a fry. I took a tentative sip. I had never shared a beverage with a boy before. I mean, in the past Sasuke and I had shared popcorn when we watched DVDs and stuff. Once when we were little he offered to share his scoop of ice cream with me after mine fell into the lake. I was just about to take a lick when his mother and Shizune came running over. Realistically, I knew that Sasuke didn't have cooties, but I couldn't help myself from feeling weirded out. But I guess now that we were 'dating', I should get used to the concept of sharing drinks and stuff with him. I shouldn't read too much into it.

"Mmph." Sasuke grunted, his mouth full of French fries. Swallowing, he grabbed my foot and pulled it up into his lap. "You painted your toenails."

I swelled up with pride. Those toe nails were the product of hours of meticulous work. I wanted them to be perfect. This was my first date, after all. I opened my mouth to explain proudly about my beauty regimen, but when I looked up, my mouth just stayed open. Sasuke was looking at me intensely with his dark onyx eyes. A chill hit me out of nowhere. It raced down my body to my toes, which Sasuke was stroking absentmindedly with one rough thumb, before moseying back up my body again.

I took a slow, shaky breath in through my ridiculously gaping mouth. Then I realized what the problem was. Sasuke's resemblance to Itachi could be so creepy sometimes, especially since they had the exact same eyes. I managed to say, "You're giving me that look again. Stop it." Sasuke continued to stubbornly give me the look for a few more seconds, and I found myself unable to look away. I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy his look, and what it did to my skin. He was like a superhero with his Massage-O-Vision. I was enjoying a bit too much for comfort, especially since Sasuke was just going to turn it on Hinata as soon as he got her back. The pleasant sensation I was feeling was not meant for me, and Sasuke would probably be horrified to know that he was giving it to me. I was just about to either find the strength to look away or pinch him (because I told him to stop giving me that look, goddamn it), when Sasuke let go of my toes and looked out at the mud field. The mud splashing off of the trucks sparkled in the artificial light. I know it sounds about as romantic as watching paint dry, or cement being poured. Nothing says romance like the smell of burning rubber. But being here with Sasuke, sitting on a tiny bench eating French fries outside of a dirty, old trailer, felt inexplicably romantic. I couldn't even bring myself to care what girls like Hinata, or Anko and Hana would say about me. And the mud that was smeared up my calves. I scratched at a spot as I heard Sasuke take a deep breath.

"Why does it have to be Itachi?"

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End of Chapter 9.

This chapter has not been beta-ed, so if you see any errors, PLEASE let me know so that I can fix them! Also, thank you to everyone who left me a review last chapter. You are all so sweet. I love hearing what you think about the story, so please don't hesitate to leave me a review or PM me with your thoughts. I will do my best to get back to you once all of my finals are over/life is less hectic, etc.

Thanks for reading!

xx Bethany


	10. Metamorphosis

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Naruto. I do however own two bottles of wine which I am going to drink because TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY.

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The Boys Next Door

Chapter 10

Metamorphosis

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I snapped my head up and tried to gauge what he'd meant by his question. Thankfully, Sasuke wasn't looking at me, because I could feel myself flushing as my heart pounded.

I was attracted to Sasuke. This was undeniably true. Not as much as I was attracted to Itachi, but still. Sasuke was incredibly attractive, and so sweet and fun, teaching me how to drive, tangling with me as we tried to switch seats in the truck. And carrying me on his back. I especially enjoyed that part. So what did he mean by his question? Did he mean _why does it have to be Itachi instead of me_? And if he did… No, of course he didn't. Sasuke was in love with Hinata. And he hated Itachi. He probably meant it as _why are you stuck on _Itachi_ of all people_? Sasuke didn't like me that way.

And of course, I didn't like Sasuke that way either. I mean, flirting with him was fun, but I had to remember that I was on a mission here and what my objectives were. It wouldn't do to lose sight of my goal now that I was so close. I decided to come clean to Sasuke about my whole mission, because I felt he deserved that much.

_Why does it have to be Itachi_… I munched on a French fry, deep in thought.

I remembered during the school year, watching Itachi walk into the cafeteria with the two most popular girls in school on either of his arms. People were calling to him from all over the room, trying to get his attention. Hoping, like me, that he would direct his radiance in their direction for 5 heavenly seconds. "Itachi lights up a room."

Sasuke still wouldn't look at me. He was focusing on our tray of French fries. "I can see how you would want to talk to him, maybe even be friends with him. But not why you'd want to get _together _with him. Itachi is like the sun. The farther away you are from it, the more inviting it seems. But you can't get too close, or you'll be burned up in an instant." He snapped his fingers, as if to emphasize his point.

"I can understand your point," I said. "But I don't think you or anyone else can talk me out of it. I've wanted this for so long…"

"More like always," Sasuke muttered, shoving another handful of fries in his mouth.

"Almost always. Actually, I can remember the exact day it started." The mud field in front of me dissolved into a sun-speckled view of the lake through shady branches. The roar of trucks faded into the sound of birds chirping, and my mother's voice. "It was before Mom died. Your family and my family were all out in the backyard, for a cookout I think. We were all really little, but I remember it so clearly. Mom wouldn't let me play with you boys, as usual, so I had to stay up on the deck with her and your mom as they chatted."

"I wasn't even really paying attention until I heard my name come up. Your mom was going on about how sweet and lady-like I was, and she told Mom that I was welcome to come over and play with you guys and Naruto whenever I wanted. I remember holding my breath, waiting for my mom's answer. All I'd ever wanted was to be able to play with you all."

"Why?"

I started. I had almost forgotten that Sasuke was there. He was staring at me intently, waiting for me to continue.

"Why what?" I asked, confused.

"Why did you want to play with us?" Sasuke put his hand on my knee. "At that stage all we really did was run around shooting each other in the face with water guns."

"Compare that to sitting in your room alone, dressing and undressing a Barbie."

"Oh." He nodded.

"But I was disappointed yet again. Mom said that your mother was nice for inviting me, but that she didn't want me to spend too much time playing with you all, for fear that I would turn into a tomboy."

"What's wrong with being a tomboy?"

"It's fine until a certain age. Actually, it's more like an advantage. You can run and pitch and catch just as well as any of the boys, and beat girls like Hana and Anko and _Hinata_," Here I burst out laughing, remembering a particularly violent game of Little League softball from way back in the day. "You can beat girls like that in almost any sport imaginable. But then as you grow older, people don't really know what to do with a tomboy anymore. And you just end up confused and alone."

There were those cute little frown lines again. Sasuke moved the tray of fries from between us and scooted over until his leg was pressed up against mine, his hand still on my knee. I took a shaky breath and went on, bolstered by his silent support. "Just as my mom was telling your mom no, Itachi ran up the stairs crying. You and the other boys had dared him to stick a breadstick between his toes and put his foot in the lake. A fish mouthed him and he freaked out."

"Er–" Sasuke started.

I shushed him – this was the most important part of the story. "I remember my mother grabbing his face between her hands and turning it toward me. She said 'Look at those eyes. You can tell he's going to be a heartbreaker.'" I smiled at the memory of Itachi's little tear-stained face looking at my mother in confusion. But when I turned and I saw the look on Sasuke's face, I immediately stopped smiling.

"That sounds like a bad thing," he grumbled.

"People mean it as a good thing," I said, suddenly not as sure of this memory as I had been for the past (almost) sixteen years. "Then my mom turned to me and said, 'Oh Sakura, just _wait_ until you're sixteen.' She was all about my sixteenth birthday. Her parents had thrown her an amazing party with a huge cake and given her a beautiful grown-up ring, along with a dress that I still have hanging in my closet. She wanted my sixteenth to be as magical as hers."

"Are you going to wear it?" We had sort of moved off the topic of Itachi, so Sasuke was calming down. Talking about Itachi around Sasuke was like throwing an aerosol can in a fire.

"Hell no," I laughed. "That dress is like, 100% polyester. Highly flammable. You wouldn't be able to put me within 100 feet of a birthday candle."

Sasuke smirked. "You should wear it for the wakeboarding show." Now we both laughed.

"You do know that we would probably be the only ones laughing if I _actually_ did that in the show, right?" Clearly our terrible senses of humour were the basis of our friendship.

"What does any of this have to do with Itachi?"

I squirmed a little under his gaze. I felt like he could see right through me with those intense, dark eyes. And I also felt his disapproval, even though I hadn't given him anything to disapprove of yet. But I had vowed to tell him everything. I took a deep breath. "My mom died not too long after that. And I kind of took it as a free pass to Disneyland. Yay, Mom wasn't around to tell me not to play with the boys! I always felt guilty that I was even the slightest bit happy that my mom wasn't around anymore. And I felt bad that I never told Dad or Shizune about Mom not wanting me to play with you boys. I went against her wishes for me. So I promised myself that I would clean up my act by the time I turned sixteen. And if I could convince Itachi to ask me out, I would know that I had turned out alright after all."

Sasuke nodded. "Because you think your mother picked him for you."

"No, not exactly–"

"Like an arranged marriage," Sasuke interrupted. "That's very forward thinking."

"No, not like that. I just feel like my mother knew what was best for me, and I know that if she were still here, she would be helping me go out and get it. But she's not here, so I'm kind of trying to figure everything out for myself. And I feel like if I can transform myself enough and get Itachi to ask me out by my birthday, that I wouldn't be disappointing my mom. I feel like she would be proud of watching me change from an ugly duckling to a beautiful swan. But there's still so much work that needs to be done, and sometimes I wonder how I'm ever going to be ready…"

"Sakura–"

"I've almost perfected my Anko/Hana impression. Or at least I _thought_ I had, until this whole mud riding thing happened."

"You think that going out with Itachi will turn you into Hana Inuzuka?"

"No, that's not what I meant. I just feel like if Itachi were to go out with me, everyone would look at me differently, you know? They'd think that maybe they'd overlooked something special in me, if Itachi wanted to be with me. And then I would be that girl. I know you hate Itachi, but you understand why everyone else loves him right?"

I took Sasuke's stony silence as a yes.

"I mean, boyfriend/girlfriend love is different than brotherly love, but how would you feel if you knew that Itachi loved and valued you as a person?"

"I would know that Armageddon was coming, and I would prepare myself for the locusts."

"I'm serious. Just standing in his aura… I mean, it's one thing to be friends or acquaintances with him. But if he _loved _you…"

I felt Sasuke shift, and thought for sure that he was about to stand up and stalk away in disgust. Instead, he put his arm around my shoulders and started tracing shapes on my upper arm, causing shivers to race down my back.

"Every word out of Itachi's mouth is meant to hurt me. It's been like that ever since the moment I was born. Did you know that when we were little, Itachi used to stand by my crib and throw blocks at me? Shisui told me. So no, I really have no idea what you mean about Itachi loving you, because he has always hated me." I almost laughed at the ridiculous of the situation, and the fact that Sasuke was still holding a grudge about this sixteen years later, but I managed to refrain. I believed him. I knew Itachi.

"I'm sorry that he treats you that way, but he doesn't treat _me _that way. And I'm the one that wants to get together with him."

"He will," Sasuke said. "If you let him get close enough." The soft shapes he had been tracing became harsher now, with a lot of sharp, jagged edges.

The tractor arrived just then to pull the pink truck out of the mud. Sasuke took his arm off me – which I probably regretted more than I should have. He leaned forward to watch, probably to make sure that the driver didn't attach the chain to the loose side of the front bumper.

"Why does it have to be Hinata?" I asked.

"It just does," he replied, without taking his eyes off of the tractor.

"You'd probably feel better if you talked about it."

"Hn."

"What do you like so much about her?"

He turned to look at me then, his eyes wide. He seemed almost alarmed, like he had the night before at the tennis courts. His eyes searched mine, looking for something and I probably would have given it to him if I had known what he was looking for. "What are you looking for?"

He blinked and shook his head, turning back to the mud pit. "Nothing. I like Hinata because she's so pretty." He said in his bullshit voice.

"Okay, now that's not fair. I gave you a straight answer about Itachi."

The tractor started forward. The chain attached to the pink truck pulled tighter and tighter, before finally snapping under the pressure. One end of it flew toward the tractor and barely avoided hitting the driver in the head.

"I like her cause she's nice." Sasuke said. "She has a nice rack. I don't know." Now I understood. Clearly it was easier for him to pretend that the ADD had kicked in instead of talking about her. The wound was still too fresh. I knew not to push him anymore.

After two more chains and a rope, the driver finally managed to get the pink truck out of the mud, and Sasuke bought the driver a doughnut. For the next hour and a half, we each took turns driving through the mud pit. And we mostly managed to forget about Itachi and Hinata.

Afterward, we drove into town and hit up all of the teenage haunts – the arcade parking lot, the bowling alley parking lot, and most importantly, the movie theater parking lot. In theory, this is what I had wanted all along – to have a bunch of people see Sasuke and I out together. And, Sasuke had purposefully besmirched Itachi's beloved pink truck with mud. Take that!

We rolled into my driveway with two minutes to spare until my curfew. I was thrilled that he had dropped me off at my house. I'd figured that he would just park over in his driveway, and I would walk home. Itachi truck wasn't in the driveway next door, but I figured that someone else was home, and if they saw us together, they were bound to tell Itachi about it.

Just as I was about to turn to Sasuke to thank him for driving me home, he bailed out the driver's side door, crossing in front of the hood. I'm fairly certain he would have opened my door for me, had I not jumped out at that exact moment. I wasn't used to this seeing this gentlemanly side of Sasuke. It was kind of weirding me out. I hopped out of the truck just as Sasuke reached my side of the truck, and would have fallen flat on my face had he not reached out to stead me at the last minute.

"I'll walk you to the door," he said slowly, as if talking to someone who didn't speak English. Or who didn't go on dates, like, ever. He took my hand. The tree frogs screeched as we walked up the dark path to my front porch. The air was warm, but I found myself shivering. My dad hadn't left the light on, thankfully, so I took a moment to collect myself as we stood there in the dark. I could feel Sasuke standing over me silently, expecting something. I was expecting something too. I don't think I could have taken the disappointment if I walked away from this whole day of hugging and giving each other smouldering looks and everything without something to show for it at the end. Even if we _were_ just friends. But for some reason, my head felt too heavy to lift.

Sasuke put his hand under my chin, and gently tilted my face upward. "If for some reason, one of us were in love with the other, if it were uneven in some way, that would be bad." He gave me a long look that I couldn't really see. The shadows on the porch were too deep. His eyes only glittered a little in the starlight.

I tried to give the look right back to him. "But we're not," I said. What the hell was with the sneakiness in my voice on _not_? I cleared my throat.

He nodded. "Then we have nothing to worry about."

"Right," I said. And I meant it.

The kiss was simple. He bent down and pressed his lips lightly to mine. The warm summer night continued on around us, yet we stood perfectly still except for his pressure on my lips. But internally, every cell in my body did a back flip to blind.

Eventually, Sasuke pulled back. "Good night, Sakura," he whispered. He ambled back to the pink truck, cranked the engine, and drove one hundred feet to his own driveway. He waved to me briefly before heading inside.

I stayed on the porch for a long time, staring in the direction of his house and telling myself that I did not like Sasuke that way because I liked Itachi and Sasuke liked Hinata and _I did not like Sasuke_. It was just that Sasuke was like Itachi in the sense that he could make confusing things seem simple and death-defying stunts seem like a good idea.

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End of Chapter 10.

This chapter has not been beta-ed, so I apologize for any poorly constructed sentences or other grammatical errors it may contain. I meant to upload this as a quasi-Christmas present to all of you, but I failed. (~ ; 3 ;)~ So here it is as a better-late-than-never-Christmas present slash post in celebration of my birthday!

I hope you all enjoy.

Thanks so much for reading!

xx Bethany


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